Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722, by Daniel Defoe

Published：2026-08-02 14:34:54 Source: best durable stacking blocks Author: Boats and Ships

Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition byDavid Price,finger painting kits for 8 year olds under 50 dollars email [email protected]

CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY

TOUR
THROUGH THE
Eastern Counties of
England, 1722.

BY
DANIEL DEFOE.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS,& MELBOURNE.
1891.

INTRODUCTION.

Defoe’s “particular anddiverting account of whatever is curious and worthobservation” in his native country, told in a series ofletters, was founded upon seventeen separate tours in thecounties, and three larger tours through the whole country. He said he had “viewed the north part of England and thesouth part of Scotland five several times over,” and hethought it worth while to note what he saw, because, “thefate of things gives a new face to things; produces changes inlow life, and innumerable incidents; plants and supplantsfamilies; raises and sinks towns; removes manufactures and trade;great towns decay and small towns rise; new towns, new palaces,and new seats are built every day; great rivers and good harboursdry up, and grow useless; again, new ports are opened; brooks aremade rivers; small rivers navigable pools, and harbours are madewhere there were none before, and the like.”  We areendeavouring, by little books published from time to time in this“National Library,” to secure some record of thechanges in our land and in our manners as a people, and of whatwas worth record in his day we can wish for no better reporterthan Defoe.

Here, therefore, is Defoe’s first letter, whichdescribes a Tour through the Eastern Counties as they were in1722.  It opens his first volume, published in 1724, whichwas entitled, “A Tour through the whole Island of GreatBritain, Divided into Circuits or Journies.  Giving aParticular and Diverting Account of whatever is Curious and worthObservation, viz., I. A Description of the Principal Cities andTowns, their Situation, Magnitude, Government, andCommerce.  II. The Customs, Manners, Speech, as also theExercises, Diversions, and Employment of the People.  III.The Produce and Improvement of the Lands, the Trade andManufactures.  IV. The Sea Ports and Fortifications, theCourse of Rivers, and the Inland Navigation.  V. The PublicEdifices, Seats and Palaces of the Nobility and Gentry. With Useful Observations upon the Whole.  Particularlyfitted for the Reading of such as Desire to Travel over theIsland.  By a Gentleman.”  The Second Volume ofthe Tour was published in June, 1725; and the Third Volume,giving a Tour through Scotland with a Map of Scotland by Mr.Moll, followed in August, 1726, completing the record of whatDefoe called “a tedious and very expensive fiveyears’ Travel.”  However tedious the travel mayhave been, Defoe’s account of it is anything but tediousreading.

The change of times is in this letter vividly illustrated inthis volume by Defoe’s account of life as he found it inthe undrained Essex marshes.  Life in them was so unhealthythat the land was cheap, men thus were tempted to take fevers forgrazing and corn-growing.  They became fairly acclimatised,but when they brought their wives in fresh and healthy from theuplands the women sickened and perished so fast, that it wascommon to find a man with his sixth or eighth wife, and Defoe wastold of an old farmer who was living with his twenty-fifth wife,and had a son about thirty-five years old, who had been marriedto about fourteen wives.  Custom had even dulled the senseof this horrible state of things until the frequent change ofwives became a local joke.

We have also a reminder in this volume of the traces and freshmemories of Civil War in the account of the Siege of Colchester,which is a bit of realisation such as no man could give betterthan Defoe.  We may note also the fulness of detail in hisaccount of Ipswich, a town that he first knew as a child ofseven.  He tells how it was once noted for strong colliervessels built there, he maintains its honour and explains itsdecay, while he makes various suggestions for the restoration ofprosperity, even to the hint that Ipswich would be a healthy andpleasant place for persons to retire to who would live well uponslender means.  He writes, indeed, of Ipswich like a loyaltownsman who had lived there all his life.

At Bury St. Edmunds Defoe tolls us how in a pathway betweentwo churches a barrister of good family attempted to assassinatehis brother-in-law whom he had invited with his wife and childrento supper.  On excuse of visiting a neighbour he led him tothe ambush of a hired assassin.  They left their victim fordead, horribly mangled on the head and face and body with ahedgebill.  He lived to bring them to justice, and wasliving still when Defoe wrote.  But the assassins had beencondemned to death “on the statute for defacing anddismembering, called the Coventry Act.”  This Touralso recalls the days when Bury was a place of fashionableholiday resort.  Defoe meditates upon the decline and fallof Dunwich, tells of the coming and going of the swallows fromour east coast, and of innumerable swallows whom he saw one daywaiting for a favourable wind on the roofs of the church andhouses at Southwold.  We read of the coming up to London ofthe Norfolk turkeys on foot, in droves of from three hundred to athousand, and so many droves that by one route alone, and thatnot the most crowded—over Stratford Bridge—a hundredand forty thousand birds travelled to London between August andOctober.

In Norwich, Defoe was less interested than in Ipswich; but ofYarmouth his account is full, and the frequency of wrecks on theeast coast, especially about Cromer Bay, which seamen called theDevil’s Throat, is illustrated by the fact that in all theway from Winterton towards Cromer that “the farmers andcountry people had scarce a barn, or a shed, or a stable, nay notthe pales of their yards and gardens, not a hog sty, but what wasbuilt of old planks, beams, wales, and timbers, etc., the wrecksof ships, and ruins of mariners’ and merchants’fortunes.”

Defoe saw the races at Newmarket, where he was “sick ofthe jockeying part.”  He went also to Bury Fair, ofwhich he gives a full description, and at Cambridge he paidhonour to the University.

There was another Tour told in letters so near toDefoe’s in date and form that the first or second volume ofone work is often sold with the second or first volume of theother.  The book not by Defoe was entitled “A Journeythrough England in Familiar Letters from a Gentleman” hereto his friend abroad, in two vols., 1722, with a third volume onScotland in 1726.  All editions published afterDefoe’s death in 1731 have matter added by others. The addition of new matter began with the novelist SamuelRichardson in 1732.

Some time afterwards there were changes announced as “bya gentleman of eminence in the literary world.”

H. M.

TOUR THROUGH THE EASTERN COUNTIES OF ENGLAND, 1722.

I began my travels where I purposeto end them, viz., at the City of London, and therefore myaccount of the city itself will come last, that is to say, at thelatter end of my southern progress; and as in the course of thisjourney I shall have many occasions to call it a circuit, if nota circle, so I chose to give it the title of circuits in theplural, because I do not pretend to have travelled it all in onejourney, but in many, and some of them many times over; thebetter to inform myself of everything I could find worth takingnotice of.

I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the morecapable of giving a full account of things, by how much the moredeliberation I have taken in the view of them, and by how muchthe oftener I have had opportunity to see them.

I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, andtook what I think I may very honestly call a circuit in the veryletter of it; for I went down by the coast of the Thames throughthe Marshes or Hundreds on the south side of the county of Essex,till I came to Malden, Colchester, and Harwich, thence continuingon the coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth; thence round by the edge ofthe sea, on the north and west side of Norfolk, to Lynn, Wisbech,and the Wash; thence back again, on the north side of Suffolk andEssex, to the west, ending it in Middlesex, near the place whereI began it, reserving the middle or centre of the severalcounties to some little excursions, which I made bythemselves.

Passing Bow Bridge, where the county of Essex begins, thefirst observation I made was, that all the villages which may becalled the neighbourhood of the city of London on this, as wellas on the other sides thereof, which I shall speak to in theirorder; I say, all those villages are increased in buildings to astrange degree, within the compass of about twenty or thirtyyears past at the most.

The village of Stratford, the first in this county fromLondon, is not only increased, but, I believe, more than doubledin that time; every vacancy filled up with new houses, and twolittle towns or hamlets, as they may be called, on the forestside of the town entirely new, namely Maryland Point and theGravel Pits, one facing the road to Woodford and Epping, and theother facing the road to Ilford; and as for the hither part, itis almost joined to Bow, in spite of rivers, canals, marshygrounds, &c.  Nor is this increase of building the caseonly in this and all the other villages round London; but theincrease of the value and rent of the houses formerly standinghas, in that compass of years above-mentioned, advanced to a verygreat degree, and I may venture to say at least the fifth part;some think a third part, above what they were before.

This is indeed most visible, speaking of Stratford in Essex;but it is the same thing in proportion in other villagesadjacent, especially on the forest side; as at Low Leyton,Leytonstone, Walthamstow, Woodford, Wanstead, and the towns ofWest Ham, Plaistow, Upton, etc.  In all which places, ornear them (as the inhabitants say), above a thousand newfoundations have been erected, besides old houses repaired, allsince the Revolution; and this is not to be forgotten too, thatthis increase is, generally speaking, of handsome, large houses,from £20 a year to £60, very few under £20 ayear; being chiefly for the habitations of the richest citizens,such as either are able to keep two houses, one in the countryand one in the city; or for such citizens as being rich, andhaving left off trade, live altogether in these neighbouringvillages, for the pleasure and health of the latter part of theirdays.

The truth of this may at least appear, in that they tell methere are no less than two hundred coaches kept by theinhabitants within the circumference of these few villages namedabove, besides such as are kept by accidental lodgers.

This increase of the inhabitants, and the cause of it, I shallenlarge upon when I come to speak of the like in the counties ofMiddlesex, Surrey, &c, where it is the same, only in a muchgreater degree.  But this I must take notice of here, thatthis increase causes those villages to be much pleasanter andmore sociable than formerly, for now people go to them, not forretirement into the country, but for good company; of which, thatI may speak to the ladies as well as other authors do, there arein these villages, nay, in all, three or four excepted, excellentconversation, and a great deal of it, and that without themixture of assemblies, gaming-houses, and public foundations ofvice and debauchery; and particularly I find none of thoseincentives kept up on this side the country.

Mr. Camden, and his learned continuator, Bishop Gibson, haveransacked this country for its antiquities, and have left littleunsearched; and as it is not my present design to say much ofwhat has been said already, I shall touch very lightly where twosuch excellent antiquaries have gone before me; except it be toadd what may have been since discovered, which as to these partsis only this: That there seems to be lately found out in thebottom of the Marshes (generally called Hackney Marsh, andbeginning near about the place now called the Wick, between OldFord and the said Wick), the remains of a great stone causeway,which, as it is supposed, was the highway, or great road fromLondon into Essex, and the same which goes now over the greatbridge between Bow and Stratford.

That the great road lay this way, and that the great causewaylanded again just over the river, where now the Temple Millsstand, and passed by Sir Thomas Hickes’s house at Ruckolls,all this is not doubted; and that it was one of those famoushighways made by the Romans there is undoubted proof, by theseveral marks of Roman work, and by Roman coins and otherantiquities found there, some of which are said to be depositedin the hands of the Rev. Mr. Strype, vicar of the parish of LowLeyton.

From hence the great road passed up to Leytonstone, a place bysome known now as much by the sign of the “GreenMan,” formerly a lodge upon the edge of the forest; andcrossing by Wanstead House, formerly the dwelling of Sir JosiahChild, now of his son the Lord Castlemain (of which hereafter),went over the same river which we now pass at Ilford; and passingthat part of the great forest which we now call Hainault Forest,came into that which is now the great road, a little on this sidethe Whalebone, a place on the road so called because the rib-boneof a great whale, which was taken in the River Thames the sameyear that Oliver Cromwell died, 1658, was fixed there for amonument of that monstrous creature, it being at first abouteight-and-twenty feet long.

According to my first intention of effectually viewing thesea-coast of these three counties, I went from Stratford toBarking, a large market-town, but chiefly inhabited by fishermen,whose smacks ride in the Thames, at the mouth of their river,from whence their fish is sent up to London to the market atBillingsgate by small boats, of which I shall speak by itself inmy description of London.

One thing I cannot omit in the mention of these Barkingfisher-smacks, viz., that one of those fishermen, a verysubstantial and experienced man, convinced me that all thepretences to bringing fish alive to London market from the NorthSeas, and other remote places on the coast of Great Britain, bythe new-built sloops called fish-pools, have not been able to doanything but what their fishing-smacks are able on the sameoccasion to perform.  These fishing-smacks are very usefulvessels to the public upon many occasions; as particularly, intime of war they are used as press-smacks, running to all thenorthern and western coasts to pick up seamen to man the navy,when any expedition is at hand that requires a sudden equipment;at other times, being excellent sailors, they are tenders toparticular men of war; and on an expedition they have been madeuse of as machines for the blowing up of fortified ports andhavens; as at Calais, St. Malo, and other places.

This parish of Barking is very large, and by the improvementof lands taken in out of the Thames, and out of the river whichruns by the town, the tithes, as the townsmen assured me, areworth above £600 per annum, including, small tithes. Note.—This parish has two or three chapels of ease,viz., one at Ilford, and one on the side of Hainault Forest,called New Chapel.

Sir Thomas Fanshaw, of an ancient Roman Catholic family, has avery good estate in this parish.  A little beyond the town,on the road to Dagenham, stood a great house, ancient, and nowalmost fallen down, where tradition says the Gunpowder TreasonPlot was at first contrived, and that all the first consultationsabout it were held there.

This side of the county is rather rich in land than ininhabitants, occasioned chiefly by the unhealthiness of the air;for these low marsh grounds, which, with all the south side ofthe county, have been saved out of the River Thames, and out ofthe sea, where the river is wide enough to be called so, beginhere, or rather begin at West Ham, by Stratford, and continue toextend themselves, from hence eastward, growing wider and widertill we come beyond Tilbury, when the flat country lies six,seven, or eight miles broad, and is justly said to be bothunhealthy and unpleasant.

However, the lands are rich, and, as is observable, it is verygood farming in the marshes, because the landlords let goodpennyworths, for it being a place where everybody cannot live,those that venture it will have encouragement and indeed it isbut reasonable they should.

Several little observations I made in this part of the countyof Essex.

1.  We saw, passing from Barking to Dagenham, the famousbreach, made by an inundation of the Thames, which was so greatas that it laid near 5,000 acres of land under water, but whichafter near ten years lying under water, and being several timesblown up, has been at last effectually stopped by the applicationof Captain Perry, the gentleman who, for several years, had beenemployed in the Czar of Muscovy’s works, at Veronitza, onthe River Don.  This breach appeared now effectually madeup, and they assured us that the new work, where the breach was,is by much esteemed the strongest of all the sea walls in thatlevel.

2.  It was observable that great part of the lands inthese levels, especially those on this side East Tilbury, areheld by the farmers, cow-keepers, and grazing butchers who livein and near London, and that they are generally stocked (all thewinter half year) with large fat sheep, viz., Lincolnshire andLeicestershire wethers, which they buy in Smithfield in Septemberand October, when the Lincolnshire and Leicestershire grazierssell off their stock, and are kept here till Christmas, orCandlemas, or thereabouts; and though they are not made at allfatter here than they were when bought in, yet the farmer orbutcher finds very good advantage in it, by the difference of theprice of mutton between Michaelmas, when it is cheapest, andCandlemas, when it is dearest; this is what the butchers valuethemselves upon, when they tell us at the market that it is rightmarsh-mutton.

3.  In the bottom of these Marshes, and close to the edgeof the river, stands the strong fortress of Tilbury, calledTilbury Fort, which may justly be looked upon as the key of theRiver Thames, and consequently the key of the City ofLondon.  It is a regular fortification.  The design ofit was a pentagon, but the water bastion, as it would have beencalled, was never built.  The plan was laid out by SirMartin Beckman, chief engineer to King Charles II., who alsodesigned the works at Sheerness.  The esplanade of the fortis very large, and the bastions the largest of any in England,the foundation is laid so deep, and piles under that, driven downtwo an end of one another, so far, till they were assured theywere below the channel of the river, and that the piles, whichwere shed with iron, entered into the solid chalk rock adjoiningto, or reaching from, the chalk hills on the other side. These bastions settled considerably at first, as did also part ofthe curtain, the great quantity of earth that was brought to fillthem up, necessarily, requiring to be made solid by time; butthey are now firm as the rocks of chalk which they came from, andthe filling up one of these bastions, as I have been told by goodhands, cost the Government £6,000, being filled with chalkrubbish fetched from the chalk pits at Northfleet, just aboveGravesend.

The work to the land side is complete; the bastions are facedwith brick.  There is a double ditch, or moat, the innermostpart of which is 180 feet broad; there is a good counterscarp,and a covered way marked out with ravelins and tenailles, butthey are not raised a second time after their first settling.

On the land side there are also two small redoubts of brick,but of very little strength, for the chief strength of this forton the land side consists in this, that they are able to lay thewhole level under water, and so to make it impossible for anenemy to make any approaches to the fort that way.

On the side next the river there is a very strong curtain,with a noble gate called the Water Gate in the middle, and theditch is palisadoed.  At the place where the water bastionwas designed to be built, and which by the plan should run whollyout into the river, so to flank the two curtains of each side; Isay, in the place where it should have been, stands a high tower,which they tell us was built in Queen Elizabeth’s time, andwas called the Block House; the side next the water isvacant.

Before this curtain, above and below the said vacancy, is aplatform in the place of a counterscarp, on which are planted 106pieces of cannon, generally all of them carrying from twenty-fourto forty-six pound ball; a battery so terrible as well importsthe consequence of that place; besides which, there are smallerpieces planted between, and the bastions and curtain also areplanted with guns; so that they must be bold fellows who willventure in the biggest ships the world has heard of to pass sucha battery, if the men appointed to serve the guns do their dutylike stout fellows, as becomes them.

The present government of this important place is under theprudent administration of the Right Honourable the LordNewbrugh.

From hence there is nothing for many miles together remarkablebut a continued level of unhealthy marshes, called the ThreeHundreds, till we come before Leigh, and to the mouth of theRiver Chelmer, and Blackwater.  These rivers united make alarge firth, or inlet of the sea, which by Mr. Camden is calledIdumanum Fluvium; but by our fishermen and seamen, who useit as a port, it is called Malden Water.

In this inlet of the sea is Osey, or Osyth Island, commonlycalled Oosy Island, so well known by our London men of pleasurefor the infinite number of wild fowl, that is to say, duck,mallard, teal, and widgeon, of which there are such vast flights,that they tell us the island, namely the creek, seems coveredwith them at certain times of the year, and they go from Londonon purpose for the pleasure of shooting; and, indeed, often comehome very well laden with game.  But it must be rememberedtoo that those gentlemen who are such lovers of the sport, and goso far for it, often return with an Essex ague on their backs,which they find a heavier load than the fowls they have shot.

It is on this shore, and near this creek, that the greatestquantity of fresh fish is caught which supplies not this countryonly, but London markets also.  On the shore, beginning alittle below Candy Island, or rather below Leigh Road, there liesa great shoal or sand called the Black Tail, which runs out nearthree leagues into the sea due east; at the end of it stands apole or mast, set up by the Trinity House men of London, whosebusiness is to lay buoys and set up sea marks for the directionof the sailors; this is called Shoe Beacon, from the point ofland where this sand begins, which is called Shoeburyness, andthat from the town of Shoebury, which stands by it.  Fromthis sand, and on the edge of Shoebury, before it, or south westof it, all along, to the mouth of Colchester water, the shore isfull of shoals and sands, with some deep channels between; allwhich are so full of fish, that not only the Barkingfishing-smacks come hither to fish, but the whole shore is fullof small fisher-boats in very great numbers, belonging to thevillages and towns on the coast, who come in every tide with whatthey take; and selling the smaller fish in the country, send thebest and largest away upon horses, which go night and day toLondon market.

N.B.—I am the more particular in my remarks onthis place, because in the course of my travels the reader willmeet with the like in almost every place of note through thewhole island, where it will be seen how this whole kingdom, aswell the people as the land, and even the sea, in every part ofit, are employed to furnish something, and I may add, the best ofeverything, to supply the City of London with provisions; I meanby provisions, corn, flesh, fish, butter, cheese, salt, fuel,timber, etc., and clothes also; with everything necessary forbuilding, and furniture for their own use or for trade; of allwhich in their order.

On this shore also are taken the best and nicest, though notthe largest, oysters in England; the spot from whence they havetheir common appellation is a little bank called Woelfleet,scarce to be called an island, in the mouth of the River Crouch,now called Crooksea Water; but the chief place where the saidoysters are now had is from Wyvenhoe and the shores adjacent,whither they are brought by the fishermen, who take them at themouth of that they call Colchester water and about the sand theycall the Spits, and carry them up to Wyvenhoe, where they arelaid in beds or pits on the shore to feed, as they call it; andthen being barrelled up and carried to Colchester, which is butthree miles off, they are sent to London by land, and are fromthence called Colchester oysters.

The chief sort of other fish which they carry from this partof the shore to London are soles, which they take sometimesexceeding large, and yield a very good price at Londonmarket.  Also sometimes middling turbot, with whiting,codling and large flounders; the small fish, as above, they sellin the country.

In the several creeks and openings, as above, on this shorethere are also other islands, but of no particular note, exceptMersey, which lies in the middle of the two openings betweenMalden Water and Colchester Water; being of the most difficultaccess, so that it is thought a thousand men well provided mightkeep possession of it against a great force, whether by land orsea.  On this account, and because if possessed by an enemyit would shut up all the navigation and fishery on that side, theGovernment formerly built a fort on the south-east point of it;and generally in case of Dutch war, there is a strong body oftroops kept there to defend it.

At this place may be said to end what we call the Hundreds ofEssex—that is to say, the three Hundreds or divisions whichinclude the marshy country, viz., Barnstable Hundred, RochfordHundred, and Dengy Hundred.

I have one remark more before I leave this damp part of theworld, and which I cannot omit on the women’s account,namely, that I took notice of a strange decay of the sex here;insomuch that all along this country it was very frequent to meetwith men that had had from five or six to fourteen or fifteenwives; nay, and some more.  And I was informed that in themarshes on the other side of the river over against Candy Islandthere was a farmer who was then living with thefive-and-twentieth wife, and that his son, who was but aboutthirty-five years old, had already had about fourteen. Indeed, this part of the story I only had by report, though fromgood hands too; but the other is well known and easy to beinquired into about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet,Prittlewell, Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham,Dengy, and other towns of the like situation.  The reason,as a merry fellow told me, who said he had had about a dozen anda half of wives (though I found afterwards he fibbed a little)was this: That they being bred in the marshes themselves andseasoned to the place, did pretty well with it; but that theyalways went up into the hilly country, or, to speak their ownlanguage, into the uplands for a wife.  That when they tookthe young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air they werehealthy, fresh, and clear, and well; but when they came out oftheir native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, therethey presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two, andseldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; “Andthen,” said he, “we go to the uplands again and fetchanother;” so that marrying of wives was reckoned a kind ofgood farm to them.  It is true the fellow told this in akind of drollery and mirth; but the fact, for all that, iscertainly true; and that they have abundance of wives by thatvery means.  Nor is it less true that the inhabitants inthese places do not hold it out, as in other countries, and asfirst you seldom meet with very ancient people among the poor, asin other places we do, so, take it one with another, not one-halfof the inhabitants are natives of the place; but such as fromother countries or in other parts of this country settle here forthe advantage of good farms; for which I appeal to any impartialinquiry, having myself examined into it critically in severalplaces.

From the marshes and low grounds being not able to travelwithout many windings and indentures by reason of the creeks andwaters, I came up to the town of Malden, a noted market townsituate at the conflux or joining of two principal rivers in thiscounty, the Chelm or Chelmer, and the Blackwater, and where theyenter into the sea.  The channel, as I have noted, is calledby the sailors Malden Water, and is navigable up to the town,where by that means is a great trade for carrying corn by waterto London; the county of Essex being (especially on all thatside) a great corn county.

When I have said this I think I have done Malden justice, andsaid all of it that there is to be said, unless I should run intothe old story of its antiquity, and tell you it was a Romancolony in the time of Vespasian, and that it was calledCamolodunum.  How the Britons, under Queen Boadicea, inrevenge for the Romans’ ill-usage of her—for indeedthey used her majesty ill—they stripped her naked andwhipped her publicly through their streets for some affront shehad given them.  I say how for this she raised the Britonsround the country, overpowered, and cut in pieces the TenthLegion, killed above eighty thousand Romans, and destroyed thecolony; but was afterwards overthrown in a great battle, andsixty thousand Britons slain.  I say, unless I should enterinto this story, I have nothing more to say of Malden, and, asfor that story, it is so fully related by Mr. Camden in hishistory of the Romans in Britain at the beginning of his“Britannia,” that I need only refer the reader to it,and go on with my journey.

Being obliged to come thus far into the uplands, as above, Imade it my road to pass through Witham, a pleasant, well-situatedmarket town, in which, and in its neighbourhood, there are asmany gentlemen of good fortunes and families as I believe can bemet with in so narrow a compass in any of the three counties ofwhich I make this circuit.

In the town of Witham dwells the Lord Pasely, oldest son ofthe Earl of Abercorn of Ireland (a branch of the noble family ofHamilton, in Scotland).  His lordship has a small, but aneat, well-built new house, and is finishing his gardens in sucha manner as few in that part of England will exceed them.

Nearer Chelmsford, hard by Boreham, lives the Lord ViscountBarrington, who, though not born to the title, or estate, or namewhich he now possesses, had the honour to be twice made heir tothe estates of gentlemen not at all related to him, at least, oneof them, as is very much to his honour, mentioned in his patentof creation.  His name was Shute, his father a linendraperin London, and served sheriff of the said city in verytroublesome times.  He changed the name of Shute for that ofBarrington by an Act of Parliament obtained for that purpose, andhad the dignity of a baron of the kingdom conferred on him by thefavour of King George.  His lordship is a Dissenter, andseems to love retirement.  He was a member of Parliament forthe town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

On the other side of Witham, at Fauburn, an ancient mansionhouse, built by the Romans, lives Mr. Bullock, whose fathermarried the daughter of that eminent citizen, Sir Josiah Child,of Wanstead, by whom she had three sons; the eldest enjoys theestate, which is considerable.

It is observable, that in this part of the country there areseveral very considerable estates, purchased and now enjoyed bycitizens of London, merchants, and tradesmen, as Mr. Western, aniron merchant, near Kelendon; Mr. Cresnor, a wholesale grocer,who was, a little before he died, named for sheriff atEarl’s Coln; Mr. Olemus, a merchant at Braintree; Mr.Westcomb, near Malden; Sir Thomas Webster at Copthall, nearWaltham; and several others.

I mention this to observe how the present increase of wealthin the City of London spreads itself into the country, and plantsfamilies and fortunes, who in another age will equal the familiesof the ancient gentry, who perhaps were brought out.  Ishall take notice of this in a general head, and when I have runthrough all the counties, collect a list of the families ofcitizens and tradesmen thus established in the several counties,especially round London.

The product of all this part of the country is corn, as thatof the marshy feeding grounds mentioned above is grass, wheretheir chief business is breeding of calves, which I need not sayare the best and fattest, and the largest veal in England, if notin the world; and, as an instance, I ate part of a veal or calf,fed by the late Sir Josiah Child at Wanstead, the loin of whichweighed above thirty pounds, and the flesh exceeding white andfat.

From hence I went on to Colchester.  The story ofKill-Dane, which is told of the town of Kelvedon, three milesfrom Witham, namely, that this is the place where the massacre ofthe Danes was begun by the women, and that therefore it wascalled Kill-Dane; I say of it, as we generally say of improbablenews, it wants confirmation.  The true name of the town isKelvedon, and has been so for many hundred years.  Neitherdoes Mr. Camden, or any other writer I meet with worth naming,insist on this piece of empty tradition.  The town iscommonly called Keldon.

Colchester is an ancient corporation.  The town is large,very populous, the streets fair and beautiful, and though it maynot said to be finely built, yet there are abundance of very goodand well-built houses in it.  It still mourns in the ruinsof a civil war; during which, or rather after the heat of the warwas over, it suffered a severe siege, which, the garrison makinga resolute defence, was turned into a blockade, in which thegarrison and inhabitants also suffered the utmost extremity ofhunger, and were at last obliged to surrender at discretion, whentheir two chief officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle,were shot to death under the castle wall.  The inhabitantshad a tradition that no grass would grow upon the spot where theblood of those two gallant gentlemen was spilt, and they showedthe place bare of grass for many years; but whether for thisreason I will not affirm.  The story is now dropped, and thegrass, I suppose, grows there, as in other places.

However, the battered walls, the breaches in the turrets, andthe ruined churches, still remain, except that the church of St.Mary (where they had the royal fort) is rebuilt; but the steeple,which was two-thirds battered down, because the besieged had alarge culverin upon it that did much execution, remains still inthat condition.

There is another church which bears the marks of those times,namely, on the south side of the town, in the way to the Hythe,of which more hereafter.

The lines of contravallation, with the forts built by thebesiegers, and which surrounded the whole town, remain veryvisible in many places; but the chief of them are demolished.

The River Colne, which passes through this town, compasses iton the north and east sides, and served in those times for acomplete defence on those sides.  They have three bridgesover it, one called North Bridge, at the north gate, by which theroad leads into Suffolk; one called East Bridge, at the foot ofthe High Street, over which lies the road to Harwich, and one atthe Hythe, as above.

The river is navigable within three miles of the town forships of large burthen; a little lower it may receive even aroyal navy; and up to that part called the Hythe, close to thehouses, it is navigable for hoys and small barques.  ThisHythe is a long street, passing from west to east, on the southside of the town.  At the west end of it, there is a smallintermission of the buildings, but not much; and towards theriver it is very populous (it may be called the Wapping ofColchester).  There is one church in that part of the town,a large quay by the river, and a good custom-house.

The town may be said chiefly to subsist by the trade of makingbays, which is known over most of the trading parts of Europe bythe name of Colchester Bays, though indeed all the towns roundcarry on the same trade—namely, Kelvedon, Witham,Coggeshall, Braintree, Bocking, &c., and the whole county,large as it is, may be said to be employed, and in partmaintained, by the spinning of wool for the bay trade ofColchester and its adjacent towns.  The account of thesiege, A.D. 1648, with a diary ofthe most remarkable passages, are as follows, which I had from sogood a hand as that I have no reason to question its being a truerelation.

A DIARY:
Or, An Account ofthe Siege and Blockade of Colchester, A.D. 1648.

On the 4th of June, we were alarmedin the town of Colchester that the Lord Goring, the Lord Capel,and a body of two thousand of the loyal party, who had been inarms in Kent, having left a great body of an army in possessionof Rochester Bridge, where they resolved to fight the LordFairfax and the Parliament army, had given the said GeneralFairfax the slip, and having passed the Thames at Greenwich, werecome to Stratford, and were advancing this way; upon which news,Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, Colonel Cook, and severalgentlemen of the loyal army, and all that had commissions fromthe king, with a gallant appearance of gentlemen volunteers, drewtogether from all parts of the country to join with them.

The 8th, we were further informed that they were advanced toChelmsford, to New Hall House, and to Witham; and the 9th some ofthe horse arrived in the town, taking possession of the gates,and having engineers with them, told us that General Goring hadresolved to make this town his headquarters, and would cause itto be well fortified.  They also caused the drums to beatfor volunteers; and a good number of the poor bay-weavers, andsuch-like people, wanting employment, enlisted; so that theycompleted Sir Charles Lucas’s regiment, which was but thin,to near eight hundred men.

On the 10th we had news that the Lord Fairfax, having beatenthe Royalists at Maidstone, and retaken Rochester, had passed theThames at Gravesend, though with great difficulty, and with someloss, and was come to Horndon-on-the-Hill, in order to gainColchester before the Royalists; but that hearing Sir CharlesLucas had prevented him, had ordered his rendezvous atBillerecay, and intended to possess the pass at Malden on the11th, where Sir Thomas Honnywood, with the county-trained bands,was to be the same day.

The same evening the Lord Goring, with all his forces, makingabout five thousand six hundred men, horse and foot, came toColchester, and encamping without the suburbs, under command ofthe cannon of St. Mary’s fort, made disposition to fightthe Parliament forces if they came up.

The 12th, the Lord Goring came into Colchester, viewed thefort in St. Mary’s churchyard, ordered more cannon to beplanted upon it, posted two regiments in the suburbs without thehead gate, let the town know he would take them into hisMajesty’s protection, and that he would fight the enemy inthat situation.  The same evening the Lord Fairfax, with astrong party of one thousand horse, came to Lexden, at two smallmiles’ distance, expecting the rest of his army there thesame night.

The Lord Goring brought in prisoners the same day, Sir WilliamMasham, and several other gentlemen of the county, who weresecured under a strong guard; which the Parliament hearing,ordered twenty prisoners of the royal party to be singled out,declaring, that they should be used in the same manner as theLord Goring used Sir William Masham, and the gentlemen prisonerswith him.

On the 13th, early in the morning, our spies broughtintelligence that the Lord Fairfax, all his forces being come upto him, was making dispositions for a march, resolving to attackthe Royalists in their camp; upon which, the Lord Goring drew allhis forces together, resolving to fight.  The engineers hadoffered the night before to entrench his camp, and to draw a lineround it in one night’s time, but his lordship declined it,and now there was no time for it; whereupon the general, LordGoring, drew up his army in order of battle on both sides theroad, the horse in the open fields on the wings; the foot weredrawn up, one regiment in the road, one regiment on each side,and two regiments for reserve in the suburb, just at the entranceof the town, with a regiment of volunteers advanced as a forlornhope, and a regiment of horse at the head-gate, ready to supportthe reserve, as occasion should require.

About nine in the morning we heard the enemy’s drumsbeat a march, and in half an hour more their first troopsappeared on the higher grounds towards Lexden.  Immediatelythe cannon from St. Mary’s fired upon them, and put sometroops of horse into confusion, doing great execution, which,they not being able to shun it, made them quicken their pace,fall on, when our cannon were obliged to cease firing, lest weshould hurt our own troops as well as the enemy.  Soonafter, their foot appeared, and our cannon saluted them in likemanner, and killed them a great many men.

Their first line of foot was led up by Colonel Barkstead, andconsisted of three regiments of foot, making about 1,700 men, andthese charged our regiment in the lane, commanded by Sir GeorgeLisle and Sir William Campion.  They fell on with greatfury, and were received with as much gallantry, and three timesrepulsed; nor could they break in here, though the Lord Fairfaxsent fresh men to support them, till the Royalists’ horse,oppressed with numbers on the left, were obliged to retire, andat last to come full gallop into the street, and so on into thetown.  Nay, still the foot stood firm, and the volunteers,being all gentlemen, kept their ground with the greatestresolution; but the left wing being routed, as above, Sir WilliamCampion was obliged to make a front to the left, and lining thehedge with his musketeers, made a stand with a body of pikesagainst the enemy’s horse, and prevented them entering thelane.  Here that gallant gentleman was killed with acarabine shot; and after a very gallant resistance, the horse onthe right being also overpowered, the word was given to retreat,which, however, was done in such good order, the regiments ofreserve standing drawn up at the end of the street, ready toreceive the enemy’s horse upon the points of their pikes,that the royal troops came on in the openings between theregiments, and entered the town with very little loss, and invery good order.

By this, however, those regiments of reserve were brought atlast to sustain the efforts of the enemy’s whole army, tillbeing overpowered by numbers they were put into disorder, andforced to get into the town in the best manner they could; bywhich means near two hundred men were killed or madeprisoners.

Encouraged by this success the enemy pushed on, supposing theyshould enter the town pell-mell with the rest; nor did theRoyalists hinder them, but let good part of Barkstead’s ownregiment enter the head-gate; but then sallying from St.Mary’s with a choice body of foot on their left, and thehorse rallying in the High Street, and charging them again in thefront, they were driven back quite into the street of the suburb,and most of those that had so rashly entered were cut inpieces.

Thus they were repulsed at the south entrance into the town;and though they attempted to storm three times after that withgreat resolution, yet they were as often beaten back, and thatwith great havoc of their men; and the cannon from the fort allthe while did execution upon those who stood drawn up to supportthem; so that at last, seeing no good to be done, they retreated,having small joy of their pretended victory.

They lost in this action Colonel Needham, who commanded aregiment called the Tower Guards, and who fought verydesperately; Captain Cox, an old experienced horse officer, andseveral other officers of note, with a great many private men,though, as they had the field, they concealed their number,giving out that they lost but a hundred, when we were assuredthey lost near a thousand men besides the wounded.

They took some of our men prisoners, occasioned by theregiment of Colonel Farr, and two more sustaining the shock oftheir whole army, to secure the retreat of the main body, asabove.

The 14th, the Lord Fairfax finding he was not able to carrythe town by storm, without the formality of a siege, took hisheadquarters at Lexden, and sent to London and to Suffolk formore forces; also he ordered the trained bands to be raised andposted on the roads to prevent succours.  Notwithstandingwhich, divers gentlemen, with some assistance of men and arms,found means to get into the town.

The very same night they began to break ground, andparticularly to raise a fort between Colchester and Lexden, tocover the general’s quarter from the sallies from the town;for the Royalists having a good body of horse, gave them no rest,but scoured the fields every day, and falling all that were foundstraggling from their posts, and by this means killed a greatmany.

The 17th, Sir Charles Lucas having been out with 1,200 horse,and detaching parties toward the seaside, and towards Harwich,they brought in a very great quantity of provisions, andabundance of sheep and black cattle sufficient for the supply ofthe town for a considerable time; and had not the Suffolk forcesadvanced over Cataway Bridge to prevent it, a larger supply hadbeen brought in that way; for now it appeared plainly that theLord Fairfax finding the garrison strong and resolute, and thathe was not in a condition to reduce them by force, at leastwithout the loss of much blood, had resolved to turn his siegeinto a blockade, and reduce them by hunger; their troops beingalso wanted to oppose several other parties, who had, in severalparts of the kingdom, taken arms for the king’s cause.

This same day General Fairfax sent in a trumpet to proposeexchanging prisoners, which the Lord Goring rejected, expecting areinforcement of troops, which were actually coming to him, andwere to be at Linton in Cambridgeshire as the next day.

The same day two ships brought in a quantity of corn andprovisions and fifty-six men from the shore of Kent with severalgentlemen, who all landed and came up to the town, and thegreatest part of the corn was with the utmost applicationunloaded the same night into some hoys, which brought it up tothe Hythe, being apprehensive of the Parliament’s shipswhich lay at Harwich, who having intelligence of the said ships,came the next day into the mouth of the river, and took the saidtwo ships and what corn was left in them.  The besieged sentout a party to help the ships, but having no boats they could notassist them.

18th.  Sir Charles Lucas sent an answer about exchange ofprisoners, accepting the conditions offered, but theParliament’s general returned that he would not treat withSir Charles, for that he (Sir Charles) being his prisoner uponhis parole of honour, and having appeared in arms contrary to therules of war, had forfeited his honour and faith, and was notcapable of command or trust in martial affairs.  To this SirCharles sent back an answer, and his excuse for his breach of hisparole, but it was not accepted, nor would the Lord Fairfax enterupon any treaty with him.

Upon this second message Sir William Masham and the ParliamentCommittee and other gentlemen, who were prisoners in the town,sent a message in writing under their hands to the Lord Fairfax,entreating him to enter into a treaty for peace; but the LordFairfax returned, he could take no notice of their request, assupposing it forced from them under restraint; but that if theLord Goring desired peace, he might write to the Parliament, andhe would cause his messenger to have a safe conduct to carry hisletter.  There was a paper sent enclosed in this paper,signed Capel, Norwich, Charles Lucas, but to that the generalwould return no answer, because it was signed by Sir Charles forthe reasons above.

All this while the Lord Goring, finding the enemystrengthening themselves, gave order for fortifying the town, anddrawing lines in several places to secure the entrance, asparticularly without the east bridge, and without the north gateand bridge, and to plant more cannon upon the works; to which endsome great guns were brought in from some ships at Wivenhoe.

The same day, our men sallied out in three places, andattacked the besiegers, first at their port, called Essex, thenat their new works, on the south of the town; a third partysallying at the east bridge, brought in some booty from theSuffolk troops, having killed several of their stragglers on theHarwich road.  They also took a lieutenant of horseprisoner, and brought him into the town.

19th.  This day we had the unwelcome news that ourfriends at Linton were defeated by the enemy, and Major Muschamp,a loyal gentleman, killed.

The same night, our men gave the enemy alarm at their newEssex fort, and thereby drew them out as if they would fight,till they brought them within reach of the cannon of St.Mary’s, and then our men retiring, the great guns let flyamong them, and made them run.  Our men shouted afterthem.  Several of them were killed on this occasion, oneshot having killed three horsemen in our fight.

20th.  We now found the enemy, in order to a perfectblockade, resolved to draw a line of circumvallation round thetown; having received a train of forty pieces of heavy cannonfrom the Tower of London.

This day the Parliament sent a messenger to their prisoners toknow how they fared, and how they were used; who returned word,that they fared indifferent well, and were very civilly used, butthat provisions were scarce, and therefore dear.

This day a party of horse, with 300 foot, sallied out, andmarched as far as the fort on the Isle of Mersey, which they madea show of attacking, to keep in the garrison.  Meanwhile therest took a good number of cattle from the country, which theybrought safe into the town, with five waggons laden withcorn.  This was the last they could bring in that way, thelines being soon finished on that side.

This day the Lord Fairfax sent in a trumpet to the Earl ofNorwich and the Lord Goring, offering honourable conditions tothem all, allowing all the gentlemen their lives and arms,exemption from plunder, and passes, if they desired to go beyondsea, and all the private men pardon, and leave to go peaceably totheir own dwellings.  But the Lord Goring and the rest ofthe gentlemen rejected it, and laughed at them, upon which theLord Fairfax made proclamation, that his men should give theprivate soldiers in Colchester free leave to pass through theircamp, and go where they pleased without molestation, only leavingtheir arms, but that the gentlemen should have no quarter. This was a great loss to the Royalists, for now the menforeseeing the great hardships they were like to suffer, began toslip away, and the Lord Goring was obliged to forbid any todesert on pain of present death, and to keep parties of horsecontinually patrolling to prevent them; notwithstanding whichmany got away.

21st.  The town desired the Lord Goring to give themleave to send a message to Lord Fairfax, to desire they mighthave liberty to carry on their trade and sell their bays andsays, which Lord Goring granted; but the enemy’s generalreturned, that they should have considered that before they letthe Royalists into the town; that to desire a free trade from atown besieged was never heard of, or at least, was such a motion,as was never yet granted; that, however, he would give thebay-makers leave to bring their bays and says, and other goods,once a week, or oftener, if they desire it, to Lexden Heath,where they should have a free market, and might sell them orcarry them back again, if not sold, as they found occasion.

22nd.  The besieged sallied out in the night with astrong party, and disturbed the enemy in their works, and partlyruined one of their forts, called Ewer’s Fort, where thebesiegers were laying a bridge over the River Colne.  Alsothey sallied again at east bridge, and faced the Suffolk troops,who were now declared enemies.  These brought insix-and-fifty good bullocks, and some cows, and they took andkilled several of the enemy.

23rd.  The besiegers began to fire with their cannon fromEssex Fort, and from Barkstead’s Fort, which was built uponthe Malden road; and finding that the besieged had a party in SirHarbottle Grimston’s house, called, “TheFryery,” they fired at it with their cannon, and batteredit almost down, and then the soldiers set it on fire.

This day upon the townsmen’s treaty for the freedom ofthe bay trade, the Lord Fairfax sent a second offer of conditionsto the besieged, being the same as before, only excepting LordGoring, Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle, and Sir Charles Lucas.

This day we had news in the town that the Suffolk forces wereadvanced to assist the besiegers, and that they began a fortcalled Fort Suffolk, on the north side of the town, to shut upthe Suffolk road towards Stratford.  This day the besiegedsallied out at north bridge, attacked the out-guards of theSuffolk men on Mile End Heath, and drove them into their fort inthe woods.

This day the Lord Fairfax sent a trumpet, complaining ofchewed and poisoned bullets being shot from the town, andthreatening to give no quarter if that practice was allowed; butLord Goring returned answer, with a protestation, that no suchthing was done by his order or consent.

24th.  They fired hard from their cannon against St.Mary’s steeple, on which was planted a large culverin,which annoyed them even in the general’s headquarters atLexden.  One of the best gunners the garrison had was killedwith a cannon bullet.  This night the besieged salliedtowards Audly, on the Suffolk road, and brought in somecattle.

25th.  Lord Capel sent a trumpet to theParliament-General, but the rogue ran away, and came not back,nor sent any answer; whether they received his message or not,was not known.

26th.  This day having finished their new bridge, a partyof their troops passed that bridge, and took post on the hillover against Mile End Church, where they built a fort, calledFothergall’s Fort, and another on the east side of theroad, called Rainsbro’s Fort, so that the town was entirelyshut in, on that side, and the Royalists had no place free butover east bridge, which was afterwards cut off by theenemy’s bringing their line from the Hythe within the riverto the stone causeway leading to the east bridge.

July 1st.  From the 26th to the 1st, the besiegerscontinued finishing their works, and by the 2nd the whole townwas shut in; at which the besiegers gave a general salvo fromtheir cannon at all their forts; but the besieged gave them areturn, for they sallied out in the night, attackedBarkstead’s fort, scarce finished, with such fury, thatthey twice entered the work sword in hand, killed most part ofthe defendants, and spoiled part of the forts cast up; but freshforces coming up, they retired with little loss, bringing eightprisoners, and having slain, as they reported, above 100.

On the second, Lord Fairfax offered exchange for Sir WilliamMasham in particular, and afterwards for other prisoners, but theLord Goring refused.

5th.  The besieged sallied with two regiments, supportedby some horse, at midnight; they were commanded by Sir GeorgeLisle.  They fell on with such fury, that the enemy were putinto confusion, their works at east bridge ruined, and two piecesof cannon taken, Lieutenant Colonel Sambrook, and several otherofficers, were killed, and our men retired into the town,bringing the captain, two lieutenants, and about fifty men withthem prisoners into the town; but having no horse, we could notbring off the cannon, but they spiked them, and made them unfitfor service.

From this time to the 11th, the besieged sallied almost everynight, being encouraged by their successes, and they constantlycut off some of the enemy, but not without loss also on their ownside.

About this time we received by a spy the bad news of defeatingthe king’s friends almost in all parts of England, andparticularly several parties which had good wishes to ourgentlemen, and intended to relieve them.

Our batteries from St. Mary’s Fort and steeple, and fromthe north bridge, greatly annoyed them, and killed most of theirgunners and firemen.  One of the messengers who brought newsto Lord Fairfax of the defeat of one of the parties, in Kent, andthe taking of Weymer Castle, slipped into the town, and brought aletter to the Lord Goring, and listed in the regiment of the LordCapel’s horse.

14th.  The besiegers attacked and took the Hythe Church,with a small work the besieged had there, but the defendersretired in time; some were taken prisoners in the church, but notin the fort; Sir Charles Lucas’s horse was attacked by agreat body of the besiegers; the besieged defended themselveswith good resolution for some time, but a hand-grenade thrown inby the assailants, having fired the magazine, the house was blownup, and most of the gallant defenders buried in the ruins. This was a great blow to the Royalists, for it was a very strongpass, and always well guarded.

15th.  The Lord Fairfax sent offers of honourableconditions to the soldiers of the garrison if they wouldsurrender, or quit the service; upon which the Lords Goring andCapel, and Sir Charles Lucas, returned an answer signed by theirhands, that it was not honourable or agreeable to the usage ofwar to offer conditions separately to the soldiers, exclusive oftheir officers, and therefore civilly desired his lordship tosend no more such messages or proposals, or if he did, that hewould not take it ill if they hanged up the messenger.

This evening all the gentlemen volunteers, with all the horseof the garrison, with Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, andSir Bernard Gascoigne at the head of them, resolved to breakthrough the enemy, and forcing a pass to advance into Suffolk byNayland Bridge.  To this purpose they passed the river nearMiddle Mill; but their guides having misled them the enemy tookthe alarm; upon which their guides, and some pioneers which theyhad with them to open the hedges and level the banks, for theirpassing to Boxted, all ran away, so the horse were obliged toretreat, the enemy pretending to pursue, but thinking they hadretreated by the north bridge, they missed them; upon which beingenraged, they fired the suburbs without the bridge, and burnedthem quite down.

18th.  Some of the horse attempted to escape the sameway, and had the whole body been there as before, they hadeffected it; but there being but two troops, they were obliged toretire.  Now the town began to be greatly distressed,provisions failing, and the townspeople, which were numerous,being very uneasy, and no way of breaking through being foundpracticable, the gentlemen would have joined in any attemptwherein they might die gallantly with their swords in theirhands, but nothing presented; they often sallied and cut off manyof the enemy, but their numbers were continually supplied, andthe besieged diminished; their horse also sunk and became unfitfor service, having very little hay, and no corn, and at lengththey were forced to kill them for food; so that they began to bein a very miserable condition, and the soldiers deserted everyday in great numbers, not being able to bear the want of food, asbeing almost starved with hunger.

22nd.  The Lord Fairfax offered again an exchange ofprisoners, but the Lord Goring rejected it, because they refusedconditions to the chief gentlemen of the garrison.

During this time, two troops of the Royal Horse sallied out inthe night, resolving to break out or die: the first rode up fullgallop to the enemy’s horse guards on the side of Maldenroad, and exchanged their pistols with the advanced troops, andwheeling made as if they would retire to the town; but findingthey were not immediately pursued, they wheeled about to theright, and passing another guard at a distance, without beingperfectly discovered, they went clean off, and passing towardsTiptree Heath, and having good guides, they made their escapetowards Cambridgeshire, in which length of way they found meansto disperse without being attacked, and went every man his ownway as fate directed; nor did we hear that many of them weretaken: they were led, as we are informed, by Sir BernardGascoigne.

Upon these attempts of the horse to break out, the enemy builta small fort in the meadow right against the ford in the river atthe Middle Mill, and once set that mill on fire, but it wasextinguished without much damage; however, the fort prevented anymore attempts that way.

22nd.  The Parliament-General sent in a trumpet, topropose again the exchange of prisoners, offering the LordCapel’s son for one, and Mr. Ashburnham for Sir WilliamMasham; but the Lord Capel, Lord Goring, and the rest of theloyal gentlemen rejected it; and Lord Capel, in particular, sentthe Lord Fairfax word it was inhuman to surprise his son, who wasnot in arms, and offer him to insult a father’s affection,but that he might murder his son if he pleased, he would leavehis blood to be revenged as Heaven should give opportunity; andthe Lord Goring sent word, that as they had reduced theking’s servants to eat horseflesh, the prisoners shouldfeed as they fed.

The enemy sent again to complain of the Royalists shootingpoisoned bullets, and sent two affidavits of it made by twodeserters, swearing it was done by the Lord Norwich’sdirection; the generals in the town returned under all theirhands that they never gave any such command or direction; thatthey disowned the practice; and that the fellows who swore itwere perjured before in running from their colours and theservice of their king, and ought not to be credited again; butthey added, that for shooting rough-cast slugs they must excusethem, as things stood with them at that time.

About this time, a porter in a soldier’s habit gotthrough the enemy’s leaguer, and passing their out-guardsin the dark, got into the town, and brought letters from London,assuring the Royalists that there were so many strong parties upin arms for the king, and in so many places, that they would bevery suddenly relieved.  This they caused to be read to thesoldiers to encourage them; and particularly it related to therising of the Earl of Holland, and the Duke of Buckingham, whowith 500 horse were gotten together in arms about Kingston inSurrey; but we had notice in a few days after that they weredefeated, and the Earl of Holland taken, who was afterwardsbeheaded.

26th.  The enemy now began to batter the walls, andespecially on the west side, from St. Mary’s towards thenorth gate; and we were assured they intended a storm; on whichthe engineers were directed to make trenches behind the wallswhere the breaches should be made, that in case of a storm theymight meet with a warm reception.  Upon this, they gave overthe design of storming.  The Lord Goring finding that theenemy had set the suburbs on fire right against the Hythe,ordered the remaining houses, which were empty of inhabitants,from whence their musketeer fired against the town, to be burnedalso.

31st.  A body of foot sallied out at midnight, todiscover what the enemy were doing at a place where they thoughta new fort raising; they fell in among the workmen, and put themto flight, cut in pieces several of the guard, and brought in theofficer who commanded them prisoner.

August 2nd.  The town was now in a miserable condition:the soldiers searched and rifled the houses of the inhabitantsfor victuals; they had lived on horseflesh several weeks, andmost of that also was as lean as carrion, which not being wellsalted bred wens; and this want of diet made the soldiers sickly,and many died of fluxes, yet they boldly rejected all offers ofsurrender, unless with safety to their offices.  However,several hundreds got out, and either passed the enemy’sguards, or surrendered to them and took passes.

7th.  The townspeople became very uneasy to the soldiers,and the mayor of the town, with the aldermen, waited upon thegeneral, desiring leave to send to the Lord Fairfax for leave toall the inhabitants to come out of the town, that they might notperish, to which the Lord Goring consented, but the Lord Fairfaxrefused them.

12th.  The rabble got together in a vast crowd about theLord Goring’s quarters, clamouring for a surrender, andthey did this every evening, bringing women and children, who layhowling and crying on the ground for bread; the soldiers beat offthe men, but the women and children would not stir, bidding thesoldiers kill them, saying they had rather be shot than bestarved.

16th.  The general, moved by the cries and distress ofthe poor inhabitants, sent out a trumpet to theParliament-General, demanding leave to send to the Prince, whowas with a fleet of nineteen men of war in the mouth of theThames, offering to surrender, if they were not relieved intwenty days.  The Lord Fairfax refused it, and sent themword he would be in the town in person, and visit them in lessthan twenty days, intimating that they were preparing for astorm.  Some tart messages and answers were exchanged onthis occasion.  The Lord Goring sent word they were willing,in compassion to the poor townspeople, and to save that effusionof blood, to surrender upon honourable terms, but that as for thestorming them, which was threatened, they might come on when theythought fit, for that they (the Royalists) were ready forthem.  This held to the 19th.

20th.  The Lord Fairfax returned what he said was hislast answer, and should be the last offer of mercy.  Theconditions offered were, that upon a peaceable surrender, allsoldiers and officers under the degree of a captain in commissionshould have their lives, be exempted from plunder, and havepasses to go to their respective dwellings.  All thecaptains and superior officers, with all the lords and gentlemen,as well in commission as volunteers, to surrender prisoners atdiscretion, only that they should not be plundered by thesoldiers.

21st.  The generals rejected those offers; and when thepeople came about them again for bread, set open one of thegates, and bid them go out to the enemy, which a great many didwillingly; upon which the Lord Goring ordered all the rest thatcame about his door to be turned out after them.  But whenthe people came to the Lord Fairfax’s camp the out-guardswere ordered to fire at them and drive them all back again to thegate, which the Lord Goring seeing, he ordered them to bereceived in again.  And now, although the generals andsoldiers also were resolute to die with their swords in theirhands rather than yield, and had maturely resolved to abide astorm, yet the Mayor and Aldermen having petitioned them as wellas the inhabitants, being wearied with the importunities of thedistressed people, and pitying the deplorable condition they werereduced to, they agreed to enter upon a treaty, and accordinglysent out some officers to the Lord Fairfax, theParliament-General, to treat, and with them was sent twogentlemen of the prisoners upon their parole to return.

Upon the return of the said messengers with the LordFairfax’s terms, the Lord Goring, &c., sent out aletter declaring they would die with their swords in their handsrather than yield without quarter for life, and sent a paper ofarticles on which they were willing to surrender.  But inthe very interim of this treaty news came that the Scots army,under Duke Hamilton, which was entered into Lancashire, and wasjoined by the Royalists in that country, making 21,000 men, wereentirely defeated.  After this the Lord Fairfax would notgrant any abatement of articles—viz., to have all abovelieutenants surrender at mercy.

Upon this the Lord Goring and the General refused to submitagain, and proposed a general sally, and to break through or die,but found upon preparing for it that the soldiers, who had theirlives offered them, declined it, fearing the gentlemen wouldescape, and they should be left to the mercy of the Parliamentsoldiers; and that upon this they began to mutiny and talk ofsurrendering the town and their officers too.  Things beingbrought to this pass, the Lords and General laid aside thatdesign, and found themselves obliged to submit; and so the townwas surrendered the 28th of August, 1648, upon conditions asfollows:—

The Lords and gentlemen all prisoners atmercy.

The common soldiers had passes to go home totheir several dwellings, but without arms, and an oath not toserve against the Parliament.

The town to be preserved from pillage,paying £14,000 ready money.

The same day a council of war being called about the prisonersof war, it was resolved that the Lords should be left to thedisposal of the Parliament.  That Sir Charles Lucas, SirGeorge Lisle, and Sir Marmaduke Gascoigne should be shot todeath, and the other officers prisoners to remain in custody tillfurther order.

The two first of the three gentlemen were shot to death, andthe third respited.  Thus ended the siege of Colchester.

N.B.—Notwithstanding the number killed in the siege, anddead of the flux, and other distempers occasioned by bad diet,which were very many, and notwithstanding the number whichdeserted and escaped in the time of their hardships, yet thereremained at the time of the surrender:

The town of Colchester has been supposed to contain about40,000 people, including the out-villages which are within itsliberty, of which there are a great many—the liberty of thetown being of a great extent.  One sad testimony of the townbeing so populous is that they buried upwards of 5,259 people inthe plague year, 1665.  But the town was severely visitedindeed, even more in proportion than any of its neighbours, orthan the City of London.

The government of the town is by a mayor, high steward, arecorder or his deputy, eleven aldermen, a chamberlain, a townclerk, assistants, and eighteen common councilmen.  Theirhigh steward (this year, 1722) is Sir Isaac Rebow, a gentleman ofa good family and known character, who has generally for abovethirty years been one of their representatives inParliament.  He has a very good house at the entrance in atthe south, or head gate of the town, where he has had the honourseveral times to lodge and entertain the late King William ofglorious memory in his returning from Holland by way of Harwichto London.  Their recorder is Earl Cowper, who has beentwice Lord High Chancellor of England.  But his lordship notresiding in those parts has put in for his deputy,—Price,Esq., barrister-at-law, and who dwells in the town.  Thereare in Colchester eight churches besides those which are damaged,and five meeting-houses, whereof two for Quakers, besides a Dutchchurch and a French church.

Public Edificesare—

1.  Bay Hall, an ancient society kept up for ascertainingthe manufacture of bays, which are, or ought to be, all broughtto this hall to be viewed and sealed according to their goodnessby the masters; and to this practice has been owing the greatreputation of the Colchester bays in foreign markets, where toopen the side of a bale and show the seal has been enough to givethe buyer a character of the value of the goods without anyfurther search; and so far as they abate the integrity andexactness of their method, which I am told of late is muchomitted; I say, so far, that reputation will certainly abate inthe markets they go to, which are principally in Portugal andItaly.  This corporation is governed by a particular set ofmen who are called governors of the Dutch Bay Hall.  And inthe same building is the Dutch church.

2.  The guildhall of the town, called by them the moothall, to which is annexed the town gaol.

3.  The workhouse, being lately enlarged, and to whichbelongs a corporation or a body of the inhabitants, consisting ofsixty persons incorporated by Act of Parliament Anno 1698 fortaking care of the poor.  They are incorporated by the nameand title of the governor, deputy governor, assistants, andguardians of the poor of the town of Colchester.  They arein number eight-and-forty, to whom are added the mayor andaldermen for the time being, who are always guardians by the samecharter.  These make the number of sixty, as above. There is also a grammar free-school, with a good allowance to themaster, who is chosen by the town.

4.  The castle of Colchester is now become only amonument showing the antiquity of the place, it being built asthe walls of the town also are, with Roman bricks, and the Romancoins dug up here, and ploughed up in the fields adjoining,confirm it.  The inhabitants boast much that Helena, themother of Constantine the Great, first Christian Emperor of theRomans, was born there, and it may be so for aught we know. I only observe what Mr. Camden says of the Castle of Colchester,viz.: In the middle of this city stands a castle ready to fallwith age.

Though this castle has stood one hundred and twenty years fromthe time Mr. Camden wrote that account, and it is not fallen yet,nor will another hundred and twenty years, I believe, make itlook one jot the older.  And it was observable that in thelate siege of this town, a common shot, which the besiegers madeat this old castle, were so far from making it fall, that theymade little or no impression upon it; for which reason, it seems,and because the garrison made no great use of it against thebesiegers, they fired no more at it.

There are two charity schools set up here, and carried on by agenerous subscription, with very good success.

The title of Colchester is in the family of Earl Rivers, andthe eldest son of that family is called Lord Colchester, thoughas I understand, the title is not settled by the creation to theeldest son till he enjoys the title of earl with it, but that theother is by the courtesy of England; however, this I take adreferendum.

From Colchester I took another step down to the coast; theland running out a great way into the sea, south and south-eastmakes that promontory of land called the Naze, and well known toseamen using the northern trade.  Here one sees a sea openas an ocean without any opposite shore, though it be no more thanthe mouth of the Thames.  This point called the Naze, andthe north-east point of Kent, near Margate, called the NorthForeland, making what they call the mouth of the river and theport of London, though it be here above sixty miles over.

At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stonein great quantities; and there are several large works calledcopperas houses, where they make it with great expense.

On this promontory is a new mark erected by the Trinity Housemen, and at the public expense, being a round brick tower, neareighty feet high.  The sea gains so much upon the land hereby the continual winds at south-west, that within the memory ofsome of the inhabitants there they have lost above thirty acresof land in one place.

From hence we go back into the county about four miles,because of the creeks which lie between; and then turning eastagain come to Harwich, on the utmost eastern point of this largecountry.

Harwich is a town so well known and so perfectly described bymany writers, I need say little of it.  It is strong bysituation, and may be made more so by art.  But it is manyyears since the Government of England have had any occasion tofortify towns to the landward; it is enough that the harbour orroad, which is one of the best and securest in England, iscovered at the entrance by a strong fort and a battery of guns tothe seaward, just as at Tilbury, and which sufficiently defendthe mouth of the river.  And there is a particular felicityin this fortification, viz., that though the entrance or openingof the river into the sea is very wide, especially at high-water,at least two miles, if not three over; yet the Channel, which isdeep, and in which the ships must keep and come to the harbour,is narrow, and lies only on the side of the fort, so that all theships which come in or go out must come close under the guns ofthe fort—that is to say, under the command of theirshot.

The fort is on the Suffolk side of the bay or entrance, butstands so far into the sea upon the point of a sand or shoal,which runs out toward the Essex side, as it were, laps over themouth of that haven like a blind to it; and our surveyors of thecountry affirm it to be in the county of Essex.  The makingthis place, which was formerly no other than a sand in the sea,solid enough for the foundation of so good a fortification, hasnot been done but by many years’ labour, often repairs, andan infinite expense of money, but it is now so firm that nothingof storms and high tides, or such things as make the seadangerous to these kind of works, can affect it.

The harbour is of a vast extent; for, as two rivers emptythemselves here, viz., Stour from Manningtree and the Orwell fromIpswich, the channels of both are large and deep; and safe forall weathers; so where they join they make a large bay or roadable to receive the biggest ships, and the greatest number thatever the world saw together; I mean ships of war.  In theold Dutch war great use has been made of this harbour; and I haveknown that there has been one hundred sail of men-of-war andtheir attendants and between three and four hundred sail ofcollier ships all in this harbour at a time, and yet none of themcrowding or riding in danger of one another.

Harwich is known for being the port where the packet boats,between England and Holland, go out and come in.  Theinhabitants are far from being famed for good usage to strangers,but, on the contrary, are blamed for being extravagant in theirreckonings in the public-houses, which has not a littleencouraged the setting up of sloops, which they now call passageboats, to Holland, to go directly from the River Thames; this,though it may be something the longer passage, yet as they aresaid to be more obliging to passengers and more reasonable in theexpense, and, as some say, also, the vessels are better seaboats, has been the reason why so many passengers do not go orcome by the way of Harwich as formerly were wont to do; insomuchthat the stage coaches between this place and London, whichordinarily went twice or three times a week, are now entirelylaid down, and the passengers are left to hire coaches onpurpose, take post-horses, or hire horses to Colchester, as theyfind most convenient.

The account of a petrifying quality in the earth here, thoughsome will have it to be in the water of a spring hard by, is verystrange.  They boast that their town is walled and theirstreets paved with clay, and yet that one is as strong and theother as clean as those that are built or paved with stone. The fact is indeed true, for there is a sort of clay in thecliff, between the town and the Beacon Hill adjoining, which,when it falls down into the sea, where it is beaten with thewaves and the weather, turns gradually into stone.  But thechief reason assigned is from the water of a certain spring orwell, which, rising in the said cliff, runs down into the seaamong those pieces of clay, and petrifies them as it runs; andthe force of the sea often stirring, and perhaps turning, thelumps of clay, when storms of wind may give force enough to thewater, causes them to harden everywhere alike; otherwise thosewhich were not quite sunk in the water of the spring would bepetrified but in part.  These stones are gathered up to pavethe streets and build the houses, and are indeed very hard. It is also remarkable that some of them taken up before they arethoroughly petrified will, upon breaking them, appear to be hardas a stone without and soft as clay in the middle; whereas othersthat have lain a due time shall be thorough stone to the centre,and as exceeding hard within as without.  The same spring issaid to turn wood into iron.  But this I take to be no moreor less than the quality, which, as I mentioned of the shore atthe Naze, is found to be in much of the stone all along thisshore, viz., of the copperas kind; and it is certain that thecopperas stone (so called) is found in all that cliff, and evenwhere the water of this spring has run; and I presume that thosewho call the hardened pieces of wood, which they take out of thiswell by the name of iron, never tried the quality of it with thefire or hammer; if they had, perhaps they would have given someother account of it.

On the promontory of land which they call Beacon Hill andwhich lies beyond or behind the town towards the sea, there is alighthouse to give the ships directions in their sailing by aswell as their coming into the harbour in the night.  I shalltake notice of these again all together when I come to speak ofthe Society of Trinity House, as they are called, by whom theyare all directed upon this coast.

This town was erected into a marquisate in honour of the trulyglorious family of Schomberg, the eldest son of Duke Schomberg,who landed with King William, being styled Marquis of Harwich;but that family (in England, at least) being extinct the titledies also.

Harwich is a town of hurry and business, not much of gaietyand pleasure; yet the inhabitants seem warm in their nests, andsome of them are very wealthy.  There are not many (if any)gentlemen or families of note either in the town or very nearit.  They send two members to Parliament; the present areSir Peter Parker and Humphrey Parsons, Esq.

And now being at the extremity of the county of Essex, ofwhich I have given you some view as to that side next the seaonly, I shall break off this part of my letter by telling youthat I will take the towns which lie more towards the centre ofthe county, in my return by the north and west part only, that Imay give you a few hints of some towns which were near me in myroute this way, and of which being so well known there is butlittle to say.

On the road from London to Colchester, before I came into itat Witham, lie four good market towns at equal distance from oneanother, namely, Romford, noted for two markets, viz., one forcalves and hogs, the other for corn and other provisions, most,if not all, bought up for London market.  At the farther endof the town, in the middle of a stately park, stood Guldy Hall,vulgarly Giddy Hall, an ancient seat of one Coke, sometime LordMayor of London, but forfeited on some occasion to theCrown.  It is since pulled down to the ground, and there nowstands a noble stately fabric or mansion house, built upon thespot by Sir John Eyles, a wealthy merchant of London, and chosenSub-Governor of the South Sea Company immediately after the ruinof the former Sub-Governor and Directors, whose overthrow makesthe history of these times famous.

Brentwood and Ingatestone, and even Chelmsford itself, havevery little to be said of them, but that they are largethoroughfare towns, full of good inns, and chiefly maintained bythe excessive multitude of carriers and passengers which areconstantly passing this way to London with droves of cattle,provisions, and manufactures for London.

The last of these towns is indeed the county town, where thecounty gaol is kept, and where the assizes are very often held;it stands on the conflux of two rivers—the Chelmer, whencethe town is called, and the Cann.

At Lees, or Lee’s Priory, as some call it, is to be seenan ancient house in the middle of a beautiful park, formerly theseat of the late Duke of Manchester, but since the death of theduke it is sold to the Duchess Dowager of Buckinghamshire, thepresent Duke of Manchester retiring to his ancient family seat atKimbolton in Huntingdonshire, it being a much finerresidence.  His grace is lately married to a daughter of theDuke of Montagu by a branch of the house of Marlborough.

Four market towns fill up the rest of this part of thecountry—Dunmow, Braintree, Thaxted, andCoggeshall—all noted for the manufacture of bays, as above,and for very little else, except I shall make the ladies laugh atthe famous old story of the Flitch of Bacon at Dunmow, which isthis:

One Robert Fitzwalter, a powerful baron in this county in thetime of Henry III., on some merry occasion, which is notpreserved in the rest of the story, instituted a custom in thepriory here: That whatever married man did not repent of hisbeing married, or quarrel or differ and dispute with his wifewithin a year and a day after his marriage, and would swear tothe truth of it, kneeling upon two hard pointed stones in thechurchyard, which stones he caused to be set up in the Priorychurchyard for that purpose, the prior and convent, and as manyof the town as would, to be present, such person should have aflitch of bacon.

I do not remember to have read that any one ever came todemand it; nor do the people of the place pretend to say, oftheir own knowledge, that they remember any that did so.  Along time ago several did demand it, as they say, but they knownot who; neither is there any record of it, nor do they tell us,if it were now to be demanded, who is obliged to deliver theflitch of bacon, the priory being dissolved and gone.

The forest of Epping and Hainault spreads a great part of thiscountry still.  I shall speak again of the former in myreturn from this circuit.  Formerly, it is thought, thesetwo forests took up all the west and south part of the county;but particularly we are assured, that it reached to the RiverChelmer, and into Dengy Hundred, and from thence again west toEpping and Waltham, where it continues to be a forest still.

Probably this forest of Epping has been a wild or forest eversince this island was inhabited, and may show us, in some partsof it, where enclosures and tillage has not broken in upon it,what the face of this island was before the Romans’ time;that is to say, before their landing in Britain.

The constitution of this forest is best seen, I mean as to theantiquity of it, by the merry grant of it from Edward theConfessor before the Norman Conquest to Randolph Peperking, oneof his favourites, who was after called Peverell, and whose nameremains still in several villages in this county; as particularlythat of Hatfield Peverell, in the road from Chelmsford to Witham,which is supposed to be originally a park, which they called afield in those days; and Hartfield may be as much as to say apark for doer; for the stags were in those days called harts, sothat this was neither more nor less than RandolphPeperking’s Hartfield—that is to say, RalphPeverell’s deer-park.

N.B.—This Ralph Randolph, or Ralph Peverell (call him asyou please), had, it seems, a most beautiful lady to his wife,who was daughter of Ingelrick, one of Edward theConfessor’s noblemen.  He had two sons byher—William Peverell, a famed soldier, and lord or governorof Dover Castle, which he surrendered to William the Conqueror,after the battle in Sussex, and Pain Peverell, his youngest, whowas lord of Cambridge.  When the eldest son delivered up thecastle, the lady, his mother, above named, who was the celebratedbeauty of the age, was it seems there, and the Conqueror fell inlove with her, and whether by force or by consent, took her away,and she became his mistress, or what else you please to callit.  By her he had a son, who was called William, after theConqueror’s Christian name, but retained the name ofPeverell, and was afterwards created by the Conqueror lord ofNottingham.

This lady afterwards, as is supposed, by way of penance forher yielding to the Conqueror, founded a nunnery at the villageof Hatfield Peverell, mentioned above, and there she lies buriedin the chapel of it, which is now the parish church, where hermemory is preserved by a tombstone under one of the windows.

Thus we have several towns, where any ancient parks have beenplaced, called by the name of Hatfield on that veryaccount.  As Hatfield Broad Oak in this county,Bishop’s Hatfield in Hertfordshire, and several others.

But I return to King Edward’s merry way, as I call it,of granting this forest to this Ralph Peperking, which I find inthe ancient records, in the very words it was passed in, asfollows.  Take my explanations with it for the sake of thosethat are not used to the ancient English:

There are many gentlemen’s seats on this side thecountry, and a great assembly set up at New Hall, near this town,much resorted to by the neighbouring gentry.  I shall nextproceed to the county of Suffolk, as my first design directed meto do.

From Harwich, therefore, having a mind to view the harbour, Isent my horses round by Manningtree, where there is a timberbridge over the Stour, called Cataway Bridge, and took a boat upthe River Orwell for Ipswich.  A traveller will hardlyunderstand me, especially a seaman, when I speak of the RiverStour and the River Orwell at Harwich, for they know them by noother names than those of Manningtree water and Ipswich water; sowhile I am on salt water, I must speak as those who use the seamay understand me, and when I am up in the country among theinland towns again, I shall call them out of their names nomore.

It is twelve miles from Harwich up the water to Ipswich. Before I come to the town, I must say something of it, becausespeaking of the river requires it.  In former times, that isto say, since the writer of this remembers the place very well,and particularly just before the late Dutch wars, Ipswich was atown of very good business; particularly it was the greatest townin England for large colliers or coal-ships employed betweenNewcastle and London.  Also they built the biggest ships andthe best, for the said fetching of coals of any that wereemployed in that trade.  They built, also, there soprodigious strong, that it was an ordinary thing for an Ipswichcollier, if no disaster happened to him, to reign (as seamen callit) forty or fifty years, and more.

In the town of Ipswich the masters of these ships generallydwelt, and there were, as they then told me, above a hundred sailof them, belonging to the town at one time, the least of whichcarried fifteen score, as they compute it, that is, 300 chaldronof coals; this was about the year 1668 (when I first knew theplace).  This made the town be at that time so populous, forthose masters, as they had good ships at sea, so they had largefamilies who lived plentifully, and in very good houses in thetown, and several streets were chiefly inhabited by such.

The loss or decay of this trade accounts for the presentpretended decay of the town of Ipswich, of which I shall speakmore presently.  The ships wore out, the masters died off,the trade took a new turn; Dutch flyboats taken in the war, andmade free ships by Act of Parliament, thrust themselves into thecoal-trade for the interest of the captors, such as the Yarmouthand London merchants, and others; and the Ipswich men droppedgradually out of it, being discouraged by those Dutchflyboats.  These Dutch vessels, which cost nothing but thecaption, were bought cheap, carried great burthens, and theIpswich building fell off for want of price, and so the tradedecayed, and the town with it.  I believe this will be ownedfor the true beginning of their decay, if I must allow it to becalled a decay.

But to return to my passage up the river.  In thewinter-time those great collier ships, above-mentioned, arealways laid up, as they call it; that is to say, the coal tradeabates at London, the citizens are generally furnished, theirstores taken in, and the demand is over; so that the great ships,the northern seas and coast being also dangerous, the nightslong, and the voyage hazardous, go to sea no more, but lie by,the ships are unrigged, the sails, etc., carried ashore, thetop-masts struck, and they ride moored in the river, under theadvantages and security of sound ground, and a high woody shore,where they lie as safe as in a wet dock; and it was a veryagreeable sight to see, perhaps two hundred sail of ships, of allsizes, lie in that posture every winter.  All this while,which was usually from Michaelmas to Lady Day, the masters livedcalm and secure with their families in Ipswich; and enjoyingplentifully, what in the summer they got laboriously at sea, andthis made the town of Ipswich very populous in the winter; for asthe masters, so most of the men, especially their mates,boatswains, carpenters, etc., were of the same place, and livedin their proportions, just as the masters did; so that in thewinter there might be perhaps a thousand men in the town morethan in the summer, and perhaps a greater number.

To justify what I advance here, that this town was formerlyvery full of people, I ask leave to refer to the account of Mr.Camden, and what it was in his time.  His words arethese:—“Ipswich has a commodious harbour, has beenfortified with a ditch and rampart, has a great trade, and isvery populous, being adorned with fourteen churches, and largeprivate buildings.”  This confirms what I havementioned of the former state of this town; but the present stateis my proper work; I therefore return to my voyage up theriver.

The sight of these ships thus laid up in the river, as I havesaid, was very agreeable to me in my passage from Harwich, aboutfive and thirty years before the present journey; and it was inits proportion equally melancholy to hear that there were nowscarce forty sail of good colliers that belonged to the wholetown.

In a creek in this river, called Lavington Creek, we saw atlow water such shoals, or hills rather, of mussels, that greatboats might have loaded with them, and no miss have been made ofthem.  Near this creek, Sir Samuel Barnadiston had a veryfine seat, as, also, a decoy for wild ducks, and a very nobleestate; but it is divided into many branches since the death ofthe ancient possessor.  But I proceed to the town, which isthe first in the county of Suffolk of any note this way.

Ipswich is seated, at the distance of twelve miles fromHarwich, upon the edge of the river, which, taking a short turnto the west, the town forms, there, a kind of semicircle, or halfmoon, upon the bank of the river.  It is very remarkable,that though ships of 500 ton may, upon a spring tide, come upvery near this town, and many ships of that burthen have beenbuilt there, yet the river is not navigable any farther than thetown itself, or but very little; no, not for the smallest beats;nor does the tide, which rises sometimes thirteen or fourteenfeet, and gives them twenty-four feet water very near the town,flow much farther up the river than the town, or not so much asto make it worth speaking of.

He took little notice of the town, or at least of that part ofIpswich, who published in his wild observations on it that shipsof 200 ton are built there.  I affirm, that I have seen aship of 400 ton launched at the building-yard, close to the town;and I appeal to the Ipswich colliers (those few that remain)belonging to this town, if several of them carrying seventeenscore of coals, which must be upward of 400 ton, have notformerly been built here; but superficial observers must besuperficial writers, if they write at all; and to this day, atJohn’s Ness, within a mile and a half of the town itself,ships of any burthen may be built and launched even at neaptides.

I am much mistaken, too, if since the Revolution some verygood ships have not been built at this town, and particularly theMelfordor Milfordgalley, a ship of forty guns; asthe Greyhoundfrigate, a man-of-war of thirty-six to fortyguns, was at John’s Ness.  But what is this towardslessening the town of Ipswich, any more than it would be to say,they do not build men-of-war, or East India ships, or ships offive hundred ton burden at St. Catherines, or at Battle Bridge inthe Thames? when we know that a mile or two lower, viz., atRadcliffe, Limehouse, or Deptford, they build ships of a thousandton, and might build first-rate men-of-war too, if there wasoccasion; and the like might be done in this river of Ipswich,within about two or three miles of the town; so that it would notbe at all an out-of-the-way speaking to say, such a ship wasbuilt at Ipswich, any more than it is to say, as they do, thatthe Royal Prince, the great ship lately built for theSouth Sea Company, was London built, because she was built atLimehouse.

And why then is not Ipswich capable of building and receivingthe greatest ships in the navy, seeing they may be built andbrought up again laden, within a mile and half of the town?

But the neighbourhood of London, which sucks the vitals oftrade in this island to itself, is the chief reason of any decayof business in this place; and I shall, in the course of theseobservations, hint at it, where many good seaports and largetowns, though farther off than Ipswich, and as well fitted forcommerce, are yet swallowed up by the immense indraft of trade tothe City of London; and more decayed beyond all comparison thanIpswich is supposed to be: as Southampton, Weymouth, Dartmouth,and several others which I shall speak to in their order; and ifit be otherwise at this time, with some other towns, which arelately increased in trade and navigation, wealth, and people,while their neighbours decay, it is because they have someparticular trade, or accident to trade, which is a kind ofnostrum to them, inseparable to the place, and which fixes thereby the nature of the thing; as the herring-fishery to Yarmouth;the coal trade to Newcastle; the Leeds clothing trade; the exportof butter and lead, and the great corn trade for Holland, is toHull; the Virginia and West India trade at Liverpool; the Irishtrade at Bristol, and the like.  Thus the war has brought aflux of business and people, and consequently of wealth, toseveral places, as well as to Portsmouth, Chatham, Plymouth,Falmouth, and others; and were any wars like those, to continuetwenty years with the Dutch, or any nation whose fleets lay thatway, as the Dutch do, it would be the like perhaps at Ipswich ina few years, and at other places on the same coast.

But at this present time an occasion offers to speak in favourof this port; namely, the Greenland fishery, lately proposed tobe carried on by the South Sea Company.  On which account Imay freely advance this, without any compliment to the town ofIpswich, no place in Britain is equally qualified like Ipswich;whether we respect the cheapness of building and fitting outtheir ships and shallops; also furnishing, victualling, andproviding them with all kinds of stores; convenience for layingup the ships after the voyage, room for erecting their magazines,warehouses, rope walks, cooperages, etc., on the easiest terms;and especially for the noisome cookery, which attends the boilingtheir blubber, which may be on this river (as it ought to be)remote from any places of resort.  Then their nearness tothe market for the oil when it is made, and which, above all,ought to be the chief thing considered in that trade, theeasiness of their putting out to sea when they begin theirvoyage, in which the same wind that carries them from the mouthof the haven, is fair to the very seas of Greenland.

I could say much more to this point if it were needful, and infew words could easily prove, that Ipswich must have thepreference of all the port towns of Britain, for being the bestcentre of the Greenland trade, if ever that trade fall into themanagement of such a people as perfectly understand, and have adue honest regard to its being managed with the best husbandry,and to the prosperity of the undertaking in general.  Butwhether we shall ever arrive at so happy a time as to recover souseful a trade to our country, which our ancestors had the honourto be the first undertakers of, and which has been lost onlythrough the indolence of others, and the increasing vigilance ofour neighbours, that is not my business here to dispute.

What I have said is only to let the world see what improvementthis town and port is capable of; I cannot think but thatProvidence, which made nothing in vain, cannot have reserved souseful, so convenient a port to lie vacant in the world, but thatthe time will some time or other come (especially considering theimproving temper of the present age) when some peculiarbeneficial business may be found out, to make the port of Ipswichas useful to the world, and the town as flourishing, as Naturehas made it proper and capable to be.

As for the town, it is true, it is but thinly inhabited, incomparison of the extent of it; but to say there are hardly anypeople to be seen there, is far from being true in fact; andwhoever thinks fit to look into the churches and meeting-houseson a Sunday, or other public days, will find there are very greatnumbers of people there.  Or if he thinks fit to view themarket, and see how the large shambles, called CardinalWolsey’s Butchery, are furnished with meat, and the rest ofthe market stocked with other provisions, must acknowledge thatit is not for a few people that all those things areprovided.  A person very curious, and on whose veracity Ithink I may depend, going through the market in this town, toldme, that he reckoned upwards of six hundred country people onhorseback and on foot, with baskets and other carriage, who hadall of them brought something or other to town to sell, besidesthe butchers, and what came in carts and waggons.

It happened to be my lot to be once at this town at the timewhen a very fine new ship, which was built there for somemerchants of London, was to be launched; and if I may give myguess at the numbers of people which appeared on the shore, inthe houses, and on the river, I believe I am much within compassif I say there were 20,000 people to see it; but this is only aguess, or they might come a great way to see the sight, or thetown may be declined farther since that.  But a view of thetown is one of the surest rules for a gross estimate.

It is true here is no settled manufacture.  The Frenchrefugees when they first came over to England began a little totake to this place, and some merchants attempted to set up alinen manufacture in their favour; but it has not met with somuch success as was expected, and at present I find very littleof it.  The poor people are, however, employed, as they areall over these counties, in spinning wool for other towns wheremanufactures are settled.

The country round Ipswich, as are all the counties so near thecoast, is applied chiefly to corn, of which a very great quantityis continually shipped off for London; and sometimes they loadcorn here for Holland, especially if the market abroad isencouraging.  They have twelve parish churches in this town,with three or four meetings; but there are not so many Quakershere as at Colchester, and no Anabaptists or Antipoedo Baptists,that I could hear of—at least, there is no meeting-house ofthat denomination.  There is one meeting-house for thePresbyterians, one for the Independents and one for the Quakers;the first is as large and as fine a building of that kind as moston this side of England, and the inside the best finished of anyI have seen, London not excepted; that for the Independents is ahandsome new-built building, but not so gay or so large as theother.

There is a great deal of very good company in this town, andthough there are not so many of the gentry here as at Bury, yetthere are more here than in any other town in the county; and Iobserved particularly that the company you meet with here aregenerally persons well informed of the world, and who havesomething very solid and entertaining in their society. This may happen, perhaps, by their frequent conversing with thosewho have been abroad, and by their having a remnant of gentlemenand masters of ships among them who have seen more of the worldthan the people of an inland town are likely to have seen. I take this town to be one of the most agreeable places inEngland for families who have lived well, but may have sufferedin our late calamities of stocks and bubbles, to retreat to,where they may live within their own compass; and several thingsindeed recommend it to such:—

1.  Good houses at very easy rents.

2.  An airy, clean, and well-governedtown.

3.  Very agreeable and improvingcompany almost of every kind.

4.  A wonderful plenty of all manner ofprovisions, whether flesh or fish, and very good of the kind.

5.  Those provisions very cheap, sothat a family may live cheaper here than in any town in Englandof its bigness within such a small distance from London.

6.  Easy passage to London, either byland or water, the coach going through to London in a day.

The Lord Viscount Hereford has a very fine seat and park inthis town; the house indeed is old built, but very commodious; itis called Christ Church, having been, as it is said, a priory orreligious house in former times.  The green and park is agreat addition to the pleasantness of this town, the inhabitantsbeing allowed to divert themselves there with walking, bowling,etc.

The large spire steeple, which formerly stood upon that theycall the tower church, was blown down by a great storm of windmany years ago, and in its a fall did much damage to thechurch.

The government of this town is by two bailiffs, as atYarmouth.  Mr. Camden says they are chosen out of twelveburgesses called portmen, and two justices out of twenty-fourmore.  There has been lately a very great struggle betweenthe two parties for the choice of these two magistrates, whichhad this amicable conclusion—namely, that they chose one ofeither side; so that neither party having the victory, it is tobe hoped it may be a means to allay the heats and unneighbourlyfeuds which such things breed in towns so large as this is. They send two members to Parliament, whereof those at this timeare Sir William Thompson, Recorder of London, and Colonel Negus,Deputy Master of the Horse to the king.

There are some things very curious to be seen here, howeversome superficial writers have been ignorant of them.  Dr.Beeston, an eminent physician, began a few years ago a physicgarden adjoining to his house in this town; and as he isparticularly curious, and, as I was told, exquisitely skilled inbotanic knowledge, so he has been not only very diligent, butsuccessful too, in making a collection of rare and exotic plants,such as are scarce to be equalled in England.

One Mr. White, a surgeon, resides also in this town.  Butbefore I speak of this gentleman, I must observe that I saynothing from personal knowledge; though if I did, I have too goodan opinion of his sense to believe he would be pleased with beingflattered or complimented in print.  But I must be true tomatter of fact.  This gentleman has begun a collection orchamber of rarities, and with good success too.  Iacknowledge I had not the opportunity of seeing them; but I wastold there are some things very curious in it, as particularly asea-horse carefully preserved, and perfect in all its parts; twoRoman urns full of ashes of human bodies, and supposed to beabove 1,700 years old; besides a great many valuable medals andancient coins.  My friend who gave me this account, and ofwhom I think I may say he speaks without bias, mentions thisgentleman, Mr. White, with some warmth as a very valuable personin his particular employ of a surgeon.  I only repeat hiswords.  “Mr. White,” says he, “to whom thewhole town and country are greatly indebted and obliged to prayfor his life, is our most skilful surgeon.”  These, Isay, are his own words, and I add nothing to them but this, thatit is happy for a town to have such a surgeon, as it is for asurgeon to have such a character.

The country round Ipswich, as if qualified on purpose toaccommodate the town for building of ships, is an inexhaustiblestore-house of timber, of which, now their trade of buildingships is abated, they send very great quantities to theking’s building-yards at Chatham, which by water is solittle a way that they often run to it from the mouth of theriver at Harwich in one tide.

From Ipswich I took a turn into the country to Hadleigh,principally to satisfy my curiosity and see the place where thatfamous martyr and pattern of charity and religious zeal in QueenMary’s time, Dr. Rowland Taylor, was put to death. The inhabitants, who have a wonderful veneration for his memory,show the very place where the stake which he was bound to was setup, and they have put a stone upon it which nobody will remove;but it is a more lasting monument to him that he lives in thehearts of the people—I say more lasting than a tomb ofmarble would be, for the memory of that good man will certainlynever be out of the poor people’s minds as long as thisisland shall retain the Protestant religion among them.  Howlong that may be, as things are going, and if the detestableconspiracy of the Papists now on foot should succeed, I will notpretend to say.

A little to the left is Sudbury, which stands upon the RiverStour, mentioned above—a river which parts the counties ofSuffolk and Essex, and which is within these few years madenavigable to this town, though the navigation does not, it seems,answer the charge, at least not to advantage.

I know nothing for which this town is remarkable, except forbeing very populous and very poor.  They have a greatmanufacture of says and perpetuanas, and multitudes of poorpeople are employed in working them; but the number of the pooris almost ready to eat up the rich.  However, this townsends two members to Parliament, though it is under no form ofgovernment particularly to itself other than as a village, thehead magistrate whereof is a constable.

Near adjoining to it is a village called Long Melfort, and avery long one it is, from which I suppose it had that addition toits name; it is full of very good houses, and, as they told me,is richer, and has more wealthy masters of the manufacture in it,than in Sudbury itself.

Here and in the neighbourhood are some ancient families ofgood note; particularly here is a fine dwelling, the ancient seatof the Cordells, whereof Sir William Cordell was Master of theRolls in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but the family is nowextinct, the last heir, Sir John Cordell, being killed by a fallfrom his horse, died unmarried, leaving three sistersco-heiresses to a very noble estate, most of which, if not all,is now centred on the only surviving sister, and with her inmarriage is given to Mr. Firebrass, eldest son of Sir BasilFirebrass, formerly a flourishing merchant in London, but reducedby many disasters.  His family now rises by the good fortuneof his son, who proves to be a gentleman of very agreeable parts,and well esteemed in the country.

From this part of the country, I returned north-west byLenham, to visit St. Edmund’s Bury, a town of which otherwriters have talked very largely, and perhaps a little toomuch.  It is a town famed for its pleasant situation andwholesome air, the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps ofEngland.  This must be attributed to the skill of the monksof those times, who chose so beautiful a situation for the seatof their retirement; and who built here the greatest and, in itstime, the most flourishing monastery in all these parts ofEngland, I mean the monastery of St. Edmund the Martyr.  Itwas, if we believe antiquity, a house of pleasure in more ancienttimes, or to speak more properly, a court of some of the Saxon orEast Angle kings; and, as Mr. Camden says, was even then called aroyal village, though it much better merits that name now; itbeing the town of all this part of England, in proportion to itsbigness, most thronged with gentry, people of the best fashion,and the most polite conversation.  This beauty andhealthiness of its situation was no doubt the occasion which drewthe clergy to settle here, for they always chose the best placesin the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or forhealth and pleasure in the situation of their religioushouses.

For the like reason, I doubt not, they translated the bones ofthe martyred king St. Edmund to this place; for it is a vulgarerror to say he was murdered here.  His martyrdom, it isplain, was at Hoxon or Henilsdon, near Harlston, on the Waveney,in the farthest northern verge of the county; but Segebert, kingof the East Angles, had built a religions house in this pleasantrich part of the county; and as the monks began to taste thepleasure of the place, they procured the body of this saint to beremoved hither, which soon increased the wealth and revenues oftheir house, by the zeal of that day, in going on pilgrimage tothe shrine of the blessed St. Edmund.

We read, however, that after this the Danes, under King Sweno,over-running this part of the country, destroyed this monasteryand burnt it to the ground, with the church and town.  Butsee the turn religion gives to things in the world; his son, KingCanutus, at first a Pagan and a tyrant, and the most cruelravager of all that crew, coming to turn Christian, and beingtouched in conscience for the soul of his father, in havingrobbed God and his holy martyr St. Edmund, sacrilegiouslydestroying the church, and plundering the monastery; I say,touched with remorse, and, as the monks pretend, terrified with avision of St. Edmund appearing to him, he rebuilt the house, thechurch, and the town also, and very much added to the wealth ofthe abbot and his fraternity, offering his crown at the feet ofSt. Edmund, giving the house to the monks, town and all; so thatthey were absolute lords of the town, and governed it by theirsteward for many ages.  He also gave them a great many goodlordships, which they enjoyed till the general suppression ofabbeys, in the time of Henry VIII.

But I am neither writing the history or searching theantiquity of the abbey, or town; my business is the present stateof the place.

The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seenof its glory: out of the old building, two very beautifulchurches are built, and serve the two parishes, into which thetown is divided, and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in the path-way between these two churches, that atragical and almost unheard-of act of barbarity was committed,which made the place less pleasant for some time than it used tobe, when Arundel Coke, Esq., a barrister-at-law, of a veryancient family, attempted, with the assistance of a barbarousassassin, to murder in cold blood, and in the arms ofhospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq., his brother-in-law, leading himout from his own house, where he had invited him, his wife andchildren, to supper; I say, leading him out in the night, onpretence of going to see some friend that was known to them both;but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin he hadhired, he attacked him with a hedge-bill, and cut him, as onemight say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of hisbeing dead, they left him.  His head and face was somangled, that it may be said to be next to a miracle that he wasnot quite killed: yet so Providence directed for the exemplarypunishment of the assassins, that the gentleman recovered todetect them, who (though he outlived the assault) were bothexecuted as they deserved, and Mr. Crisp is yet alive.  Theywere condemned on the statute for defacing and dismembering,called the Coventry Act.

But this accident does not at all lessen the pleasure andagreeable delightful show of the town of Bury; it is crowded withnobility and gentry, and all sorts of the most agreeable company;and as the company invites, so there is the appearance ofpleasure upon the very situation; and they that live at Bury aresupposed to live there for the sake of it.

The Lord Jermin, afterwards Lord Dover, and, since hislordship’s decease, Sir Robert Davers, enjoyed the mostdelicious seat of Rushbrook, near this town.

The present members of Parliament for this place are JermynDavers and James Reynolds, Esquires.

Mr. Harvey, afterwards created Lord Harvey, by King William,and since that made Earl of Bristol by King George, lived manyyears in this town, leaving a noble and pleasantly situated housein Lincolnshire, for the more agreeable living on a spot socompletely qualified for a life of delight as this of Bury.

The Duke of Grafton, now Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, has alsoa stately house at Euston, near this town, which he enjoys inright of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Arlington, one ofthe chief ministers of State in the reign of King Charles II.,and who made the second letter in the word “cabal,” aword formed by that famous satirist Andrew Marvell, to representthe five heads of the politics of that time, as the word“smectymnus” was on a former occasion.

I shall believe nothing so scandalous of the ladies of thistown and the country round it as a late writer insinuates. That the ladies round the country appear mighty gay and agreeableat the time of the fair in this town I acknowledge; one hardlysees such a show in any part of the world; but to suggest theycome hither, as to a market, is so coarse a jest, that thegentlemen that wait on them hither (for they rarely come but ingood company) ought to resent and correct him for it.

It is true, Bury Fair, like Bartholomew Fair, is a fair fordiversion, more than for trade; and it may be a fair for toys andfor trinkets, which the ladies may think fit to lay out some oftheir money in, as they see occasion.  But to judge fromthence that the knights’ daughters of Norfolk,Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk—that is to say, for it cannotbe understood any otherwise, the daughters of all the gentry ofthe three counties—come hither to be picked up, is a way ofspeaking I never before heard any author have the assurance tomake use of in print.

The assembly he justly commends for the bright appearance ofthe beauties; but with a sting in the tail of this compliment,where he says they seldom end without some considerable match orintrigue; and yet he owns that during the fair these assembliesare held every night.  Now that these fine ladies gointriguing every night, and that too after the comedy is done,which is after the fair and raffling is over for the day, so thatit must be very late.  This is a terrible character for theladies of Bury, and intimates, in short, that most of them areloose women, which is a horrid abuse upon the whole country.

Now, though I like not the assemblies at all, and shall inanother place give them something of their due, yet having theopportunity to see the fair at Bury, and to see that there were,indeed, abundance of the finest ladies, or as fine as any inBritain, yet I must own the number of the ladies at the comedy,or at the assembly, is no way equal to the number that are seenin the town, much less are they equal to the whole body of theladies in the three counties; and I must also add, that though itis far from true that all that appear at the assembly are therefor matches or intrigues, yet I will venture to say that they arenot the worst of the ladies who stay away, neither are they thefewest in number or the meanest in beauty, but just the contrary;and I do not at all doubt, but that the scandalous liberty sometake at those assemblies will in time bring them out of creditwith the virtuous part of the sex here, as it has done already inKent and other places, and that those ladies who most value theirreputation will be seen less there than they have been; forthough the institution of them has been innocent and virtuous,the ill use of them, and the scandalous behaviour of some peopleat them, will in time arm virtue against them, and they will belaid down as they have been set up without much satisfaction.

But the beauty of this town consists in the number of gentrywho dwell in and near it, the polite conversation among them, theaffluence and plenty they live in, the sweet air they breathe in,and the pleasant country they have to go abroad in.

Here is no manufacturing in this town, or but very little,except spinning, the chief trade of the place depending upon thegentry who live there, or near it, and who cannot fail to causetrade enough by the expense of their families and equipages amongthe people of a county town.  They have but a very smallriver, or rather but a very small branch of a small river, atthis town, which runs from hence to Milden Hall, on the edge ofthe fens.  However, the town and gentlemen about have beenat the charge, or have so encouraged the engineer who was at thecharge, that they have made this river navigable to the saidMilden Hall, from whence there is a navigable dyke, called MildenHall Drain, which goes into the River Ouse, and so to Lynn; sothat all their coal and wine, iron, lead, and other heavy goods,are brought by water from Lynn, or from London, by the way ofLynn, to the great ease of the tradesmen.

This town is famous for two great events.  One was thatin the year 1447, in the 25th year of Henry VI., a Parliament washeld here.

The other was, that at the meeting of this Parliament, thegreat Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, regent of the kingdom duringthe absence of King Henry V. and the minority of Henry VI., andto his last hour the safeguard of the whole nation, and darlingof the people, was basely murdered here; by whose death the gatewas opened to that dreadful war between the houses of Lancasterand York, which ended in the confusion of that very race who aresupposed to have contrived that murder.

From St. Edmund’s Bury I returned by Stowmarket andNeedham to Ipswich, that I might keep as near the coast as wasproper to my designed circuit or journey; and from Ipswich, tovisit the sea again, I went to Woodbridge, and from thence toOrford, on the sea side.

Woodbridge has nothing remarkable, but that it is aconsiderable market for butter and corn to be exported to London;for now begins that part which is ordinarily called High Suffolk,which, being a rich soil, is for a long tract of ground whollyemployed in dairies, and they again famous for the best butter,and perhaps the worst cheese, in England.  The butter isbarrelled, or often pickled up in small casks, and sold, not inLondon only, but I have known a firkin of Suffolk butter sent tothe West Indies, and brought back to England again, and has beenperfectly good and sweet, as at first.

The port for the shipping off their Suffolk butter is chieflyWoodbridge, which for that reason is full of corn factors andbutter factors, some of whom are very considerable merchants.

From hence, turning down to the shore, we see Orfordness, anoted point of land for the guide of the colliers and coasters,and a good shelter for them to ride under when a strongnorth-east wind blows and makes a foul shore on the coast.

South of the Ness is Orford Haven, being the mouth of twolittle rivers meeting together.  It is a very good harbourfor small vessels, but not capable of receiving a ship ofburden.

Orford was once a good town, but is decayed, and as it standson the land side of the river the sea daily throws up more landto it, and falls off itself from it, as if it was resolved todisown the place, and that it should be a seaport no longer.

A little farther lies Aldborough, as thriving, though withouta port, as the other is decaying, with a good river in the frontof it.

There are some gentlemen’s seats up farther from thesea, but very few upon the coast.

From Aldborough to Dunwich there are no towns of note; eventhis town seems to be in danger of being swallowed up, for famereports that once they had fifty churches in the town; I saw butone left, and that not half full of people.

This town is a testimony of the decay of public things, thingsof the most durable nature; and as the old poet expresses it,

“By numerous examples we may see,
That towns and cities die as well as we.”

The ruins of Carthage, of the great city of Jerusalem, or ofancient Rome, are not at all wonderful to me.  The ruins ofNineveh, which are so entirety sunk as that it is doubtful wherethe city stood; the ruins of Babylon, or the great Persepolis,and many capital cities, which time and the change of monarchieshave overthrown, these, I say, are not at all wonderful, becausebeing the capitals of great and flourishing kingdoms, where thosekingdoms were overthrown, the capital cities necessarily fellwith them; but for a private town, a seaport, and a town ofcommerce, to decay, as it were, of itself (for we never read ofDunwich being plundered or ruined by any disaster, at least, notof late years); this, I must confess, seems owing to nothing butto the fate of things, by which we see that towns, kings,countries, families, and persons, have all their elevation, theirmedium, their declination, and even their destruction in the wombof time, and the course of nature.  It is true, this town ismanifestly decayed by the invasion of the waters, and as othertowns seem sufferers by the sea, or the tide withdrawing fromtheir ports, such as Orford, just now named, Winchelsea in Kent,and the like, so this town is, as it were, eaten up by the sea,as above; and the still encroaching ocean seems to threaten itwith a fatal immersion in a few years more.

Yet Dunwich, however ruined, retains some share of trade, asparticularly for the shipping of butter, cheese, and corn, whichis so great a business in this county, that it employs a greatmany people and ships also; and this port lies right against theparticular part of the county for butter, as Framlingham,Halstead, etc.  Also a very great quantity of corn is boughtup hereabout for the London market; for I shall still touch thatpoint how all the counties in England contribute somethingtowards the subsistence of the great city of London, of which thebutter here is a very considerable article; as also coarsecheese, which I mentioned before, used chiefly for theking’s ships.

Hereabouts they begin to talk of herrings and the fishery; andwe find in the ancient records that this town, which was thenequal to a large city, paid, among other tribute to thegovernment, fifty thousand of herrings.  Here also, and atSwole, or Southole, the next seaport, they cure sprats in thesame manner as they do herrings at Yarmouth; that is to say,speaking in their own language, they make red sprats; or to speakgood English, they make sprats red.

It is remarkable that this town is now so much washed away bythe sea, that what little trade they have is carried on byWalderswick, a little town near Swole, the vessels coming inthere, because the ruins of Dunwich make the shore there unsafeand uneasy to the boats; from whence the northern coasting seamena rude verse of their own using, and I suppose of their ownmaking, as follows,

“Swoul and Dunwich, and Walderswick,
All go in at one lousie creek.”

This “lousie creek,” in short, is a little riverat Swoul, which our late famous atlas-maker calls a good harbourfor ships, and rendezvous of the royal navy; but that by-the-bye;the author, it seems, knew no better.

From Dunwich we came to Southwold, the town above-named: thisis a small port town upon the coast, at the mouth of a littleriver called the Blith.  I found no business the people herewere employed in but the fishery, as above, for herrings andsprats, which they cure by the help of smoke, as they do atYarmouth.

There is but one church in this town, but it is a very largeone and well built, as most of the churches in this county are,and of impenetrable flint; indeed, there is no occasion for itsbeing so large, for staying there one Sabbath day, I wassurprised to see an extraordinary large church, capable ofreceiving five or six thousand people, and but twenty-seven in itbesides the parson and the clerk; but at the same time themeeting-house of the Dissenters was full to the very doors,having, as I guessed, from six to eight hundred people in it.

This town is made famous for a very great engagement at sea,in the year 1672, between the English and Dutch fleets, in thebay opposite to the town, in which, not to be partial toourselves, the English fleet was worsted; and the brave Montague,Earl of Sandwich, Admiral under the Duke of York, lost hislife.  The ship Royal Prince, carrying one hundredguns, in which he was, and which was under him, commanded by SirEdward Spragg, was burnt, and several other ships lost, and aboutsix hundred seamen; part of those killed in the fight were, as Iwas told, brought on shore here and buried in the churchyard ofthis town, as others also were at Ipswich.

At this town in particular, and so at all the towns on thiscoast, from Orfordness to Yarmouth, is the ordinary place whereour summer friends the swallows first land when they come tovisit us; and here they may be said to embark for their return,when they go back into warmer climates; and as I think thefollowing remark, though of so trifling a circumstance, may beboth instructing as well as diverting, it may be very proper inthis place.  The case is this; I was some years before atthis place, at the latter end of the year, viz., about thebeginning of October, and lodging in a house that looked into thechurchyard, I observed in the evening, an unusual multitude ofbirds sitting on the leads of the church.  Curiosity led meto go nearer to see what they were, and I found they were allswallows; that there was such an infinite number that theycovered the whole roof of the church, and of several houses near,and perhaps might of more houses which I did not see.  Thisled me to inquire of a grave gentleman whom I saw near me, whatthe meaning was of such a prodigious multitude of swallowssitting there.  “Oh, sir,” says he, turningtowards the sea, “you may see the reason; the wind is offsea.”  I did not seem fully informed by thatexpression, so he goes on, “I perceive, sir,” sayshe, “you are a stranger to it; you must then understandfirst, that this is the season of the year when the swallows,their food here failing, begin to leave us, and return to thecountry, wherever it be, from whence I suppose they came; andthis being the nearest to the coast of Holland, they come here toembark” (this he said smiling a little); “and now,sir,” says he, “the weather being too calm or thewind contrary, they are waiting for a gale, for they are allwind-bound.”

This was more evident to me, when in the morning I found thewind had come about to the north-west in the night, and there wasnot one swallow to be seen of near a million, which I believe wasthere the night before.

How those creatures know that this part of the Island of GreatBritain is the way to their home, or the way that they are to go;that this very point is the nearest cut over, or even that thenearest cut is best for them, that we must leave to thenaturalists to determine, who insist upon it that brutes cannotthink.

Certain it is that the swallows neither come hither for warmweather nor retire from cold; the thing is of quite anothernature.  They, like the shoals of fish in the sea, pursuetheir prey; they are a voracious creature, they feed flying;their food is found in the air, viz., the insects, of which inour summer evenings, in damp and moist places, the air isfull.  They come hither in the summer because our air isfuller of fogs and damps than in other countries, and for thatreason feeds great quantities of insects.  If the air be hotand dry the gnats die of themselves, and even the swallows willbe found famished for want, and fall down dead out of the air,their food being taken from them.  In like manner, when coldweather comes in the insects all die, and then of necessity theswallows quit us, and follow their food wherever they go. This they do in the manner I have mentioned above, for sometimesthey are seen to go off in vast flights like a cloud.  Andsometimes again, when the wind grows fair, they go away a few anda few as they come, not staying at all upon the coast.

Note.—This passing and re-passing of the swallowsis observed nowhere so much, that I have heard of, or in but fewother places, except on this eastern coast, namely, from aboveHarwich to the east point of Norfolk, called Winterton Ness,North, which is all right against Holland.  We know nothingof them any farther north, the passage of the sea being, as Isuppose, too broad from Flamborough Head and the shore ofHolderness in Yorkshire, etc.

I find very little remarkable on this side of Suffolk, butwhat is on the sea-shore as above.  The inland country isthat which they properly call High Suffolk, and is full of richfeeding grounds and large farms, mostly employed in dairies formaking the Suffolk butter and cheese, of which I have spokenalready.  Among these rich grounds stand some market towns,though not of very considerable note; such as Framlingham, wherewas once a royal castle, to which Queen Mary retired when theNorthumberland faction, in behalf of the Lady Jane, endeavouredto supplant her.  And it was this part of Suffolk where theGospellers, as they were then called, preferred their loyalty totheir religion, and complimented the Popish line at expense oftheir share of the Reformation.  But they paid dear for it,and their successors have learned better politics since.

In these parts are also several good market towns, some inthis county and some in the other, as Beccles, Bungay, Harlston,etc., all on the edge of the River Waveney, which parts here thecounties of Suffolk and Norfolk.  And here in a bye-place,and out of common remark, lies the ancient town of Hoxon, famousfor being the place where St. Edmund was martyred, for whom somany cells and shrines have been set up and monasteries built,and in honour of whom the famous monastery of St. Edmundsbury,above mentioned, was founded, which most people erroneously thinkwas the place where the said murder was committed.

Besides the towns mentioned above, there are Halesworth,Saxmundham, Debenham, Aye, or Eye, all standing in this easternside of Suffolk, in which, as I have said, the whole country isemployed in dairies or in feeding of cattle.

This part of England is also remarkable for being the firstwhere the feeding and fattening of cattle, both sheep as well asblack cattle, with turnips, was first practised in England, whichis made a very great part of the improvement of their lands tothis day, and from whence the practice is spread over most of theeast and south parts of England to the great enriching of thefarmers and increase of fat cattle.  And though some haveobjected against the goodness of the flesh thus fed with turnips,and have fancied it would taste of the root, yet upon experienceit is found that at market there is no difference, nor can theythat buy single out one joint of mutton from another by thetaste.  So that the complaint which our nice palates atfirst made begins to cease of itself, and a very great quantityof beef and mutton also is brought every year and every week toLondon from this side of England, and much more than was formerlyknown to be fed there.

I cannot omit, however little it may seem, that this county ofSuffolk is particularly famous for furnishing the City of Londonand all the counties round with turkeys, and that it is thoughtthere are more turkeys bred in this county and the part ofNorfolk that adjoins to it than in all the rest of England,especially for sale, though this may be reckoned, as I say above,but a trifling thing to take notice of in these remarks; yet, asI have hinted, that I shall observe how London is in generalsupplied with all its provisions from the whole body of thenation, and how every part of the island is engaged in somedegree or other of that supply.  On this account I could notomit it, nor will it be found so inconsiderable an article assome may imagine, if this be true, which I received an account offrom a person living on the place, viz., that they have countedthree hundred droves of turkeys (for they drive them all indroves on foot) pass in one season over Stratford Bridge on theRiver Stour, which parts Suffolk from Essex, about six miles fromColchester, on the road from Ipswich to London.  Thesedroves, as they say, generally contain from three hundred to athousand each drove; so that one may suppose them to contain fivehundred one with another, which is one hundred and fifty thousandin all; and yet this is one of the least passages, the numberswhich travel by Newmarket Heath and the open country and theforest, and also the numbers that come by Sudbury and Clare beingmany more.

For the further supplies of the markets of London withpoultry, of which these countries particularly abound, they havewithin these few years found it practicable to make the geesetravel on foot too, as well as the turkeys, and a prodigiousnumber are brought up to London in droves from the farthest partsof Norfolk; even from the fen country about Lynn, Downham,Wisbech, and the Washes; as also from all the east side ofNorfolk and Suffolk, of whom it is very frequent now to meetdroves with a thousand, sometimes two thousand in a drove. They begin to drive them generally in August, by which time theharvest is almost over, and the geese may feed in the stubbles asthey go.  Thus they hold on to the end of October, when theroads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet andshort legs to march in.

Besides these methods of driving these creatures on foot, theyhave of late also invented a new method of carriage, being cartsformed on purpose, with four stories or stages to put thecreatures in one above another, by which invention one cart willcarry a very great number; and for the smoother going they drivewith two horses abreast, like a coach, so quartering the road forthe ease of the gentry that thus ride.  Changing horses,they travel night and day, so that they bring the fowls seventy,eighty, or, one hundred miles in two days and one night. The horses in this new-fashioned voiture go two abreast, asabove, but no perch below, as in a coach, but they are fastenedtogether by a piece of wood lying crosswise upon their necks, bywhich they are kept even and together, and the driver sits on thetop of the cart like as in the public carriages for the army,etc.

In this manner they hurry away the creatures alive, andinfinite numbers are thus carried to London every year. This method is also particular for the carrying young turkeys orturkey poults in their season, which are valuable, and yield agood price at market; as also for live chickens in the dearseasons, of all which a very great number are brought in thismanner to London, and more prodigiously out of this country thanany other part of England, which is the reason of my speaking ofit here.

In this part, which we call High Suffolk, there are not somany families of gentry or nobility placed as in the other sideof the country.  But it is observed that though their seatsare not so frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure ofWest Suffolk is much of it supported by the wealth of HighSuffolk, for the richness of the lands and application of thepeople to all kinds of improvement is scarce credible; also thefarmers are so very considerable and their farms and dairies solarge that it is very frequent for a farmer to have £1,000stock upon his farm in cows only.

Norfolk.

From High Suffolk I passed the Waveney into Norfolk, nearSchole Inn.  In my passage I saw at Redgrave (the seat ofthe family) a most exquisite monument of Sir John Holt, Knight,late Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench several years,and one of the most eminent lawyers of his time.  One of theheirs of the family is now building a fine seat about a mile onthe south side of Ipswich, near the road.

The epitaph or inscription on this monument is asfollows:—

M. S.
D. Johannis Holt, Equitis Aur.
Totius Angliæ in Banco Regis
per21 Annos continuos
Capitalis Justitiarii
Gulielmo Regi Annæqur Reginæ
Consiliarii perpetui:
Libertatis ac Legum Anglicarum
Assertoris, Vindicis, Custodis,
Vigilis Acris & intrepidi,
Rolandus Frater Uncius & Hæres
Optime de se Merito
posuit,
Die Martis Vto. 1709.  Sublatus est
ex Oculis nostris
Natus30 Decembris, Anno1642.

When we come into Norfolk, we see a face of diligence spreadover the whole country; the vast manufactures carried on (inchief) by the Norwich weavers employs all the country round inspinning yarn for them; besides many thousand packs of yarn whichthey receive from other countries, even from as far as Yorkshireand Westmoreland, of which I shall speak in its place.

This side of Norfolk is very populous, and thronged with greatand spacious market-towns, more and larger than any other part ofEngland so far from London, except Devonshire, and the WestRiding of Yorkshire; for example, between the frontiers ofSuffolk and the city of Norwich on this side, which is not above22 miles in breadth, are the following market-towns,viz.:—

Most of these towns are very populous and large; but thatwhich is most remarkable is, that the whole country round them isso interspersed with villages, and those villages so large, andso full of people, that they are equal to market-towns in othercountries; in a word, they render this eastern part of Norfolkexceeding full of inhabitants.

An eminent weaver of Norwich gave me a scheme of their tradeon this occasion, by which, calculating from the number of loomsat that time employed in the city of Norwich only, besides thoseemployed in other towns in the same county, he made it appearvery plain, that there were 120,000 people employed in thewoollen and silk and wool manufactures of that city only; notthat the people all lived in the city, though Norwich is a verylarge and populous city too: but, I say, they were employed forspinning the yarn used for such goods as were all made in thatcity.  This account is curious enough, and very exact, butit is too long for the compass of this work.

This shows the wonderful extent of the Norwich manufacture, orstuff-weaving trade, by which so many thousands of families aremaintained.  Their trade, indeed, felt a very sensibledecay, and the cries of the poor began to be very loud, when thewearing of painted calicoes was grown to such a height inEngland, as was seen about two or three years ago; but an Act ofParliament having been obtained, though not without greatstruggle, in the years 1720 and 1721, for prohibiting the use andwearing of calicoes, the stuff trade revived incredibly; and as Ipassed this part of the country in the year 1723, themanufacturers assured me that there was not, in all the easternand middle part of Norfolk, any hand unemployed, if they wouldwork; and that the very children, after four or five years ofage, could every one earn their own bread.  But I return tospeak of the villages and towns in the rest of the county; Ishall come to the city of Norwich by itself.

This throng of villages continues through all the east part ofthe country, which is of the greatest extent, and where themanufacture is chiefly carried on.  If any part of it bewaste and thin of inhabitants, it is the west part, drawing aline from about Brand, or Brandon, south, to Walsinghan,north.  This part of the country indeed is full of openplains, and somewhat sandy and barren, and feeds great flocks ofgood sheep; but put it all together, the county of Norfolk hasthe most people in the least tract of land of any county inEngland, except about London, and Exon, and the West Riding ofYorkshire, as above.

Add to this, that there is no single county in England, exceptas above, that can boast of three towns so populous, so rich, andso famous for trade and navigation, as in this county.  Bythese three towns, I mean the city of Norwich, the towns ofYarmouth and Lynn.  Besides that, it has several otherseaports of very good trade, as Wisbech, Wells, Burnham, Clye,etc.

Norwich is the capital of all the county, and the centre ofall the trade and manufactures which I have just mentioned; anancient, large, rich, and populous city.  If a stranger wasonly to ride through or view the city of Norwich for a day, hewould have much more reason to think there was a town withoutinhabitants, than there is really to say so of Ipswich; but onthe contrary if he was to view the city, either on a Sabbath-day,or on any public occasion, he would wonder where all the peoplecould dwell, the multitude is so great.  But the case isthis: the inhabitants being all busy at their manufactures, dwellin their garrets at their looms, and in their combing shops (sothey call them), twisting-mills, and other work-houses, almostall the works they are employed in being done within doors. There are in this city thirty-two parishes besides the cathedral,and a great many meeting-houses of Dissenters of alldenominations.  The public edifices are chiefly the castle,ancient and decayed, and now for many years past made use of fora gaol.  The Duke of Norfolk’s house was formerly keptwell, and the gardens preserved for the pleasure and diversion ofthe citizens, but since feeling too sensibly the sinkingcircumstances of that once glorious family, who were the firstpeers and hereditary earl-marshals of England.

The walls of this city are reckoned three miles incircumference, taking in more ground than the City of London, butmuch of that ground lying open in pasture-fields and gardens; nordoes it seem to be, like some ancient places, a decayed,declining town, and that the walls mark out its ancientdimensions; for we do not see room to suppose that it was everlarger or more populous than it is now.  But the walls seemto be placed as if they expected that the city would in timeincrease sufficiently to fill them up with buildings.

The cathedral of this city is a fine fabric, and the spiresteeple very high and beautiful.  It is not ancient, thebishop’s see having been first at Thetford, from whence itwas not translated hither till the twelfth century.  Yet thechurch has so many antiquities in it, that our late great scholarand physician, Sir Thomas Brown, thought it worth his while towrite a whole book to collect the monuments and inscriptions inthis church, to which I refer the reader.

The River Yare runs through this city, and is navigable thusfar without the help of any art (that is to say, without locks orstops), and being increased by other waters, passes afterwardsthrough a long tract of the richest meadows, and the largest,take them all together, that are anywhere in England, lying forthirty miles in length, from this city to Yarmouth, including thereturn of the said meadows on the bank of the Waveney south, andon the River Thyrn north.

Here is one thing indeed strange in itself, and more so, inthat history seems to be quite ignorant of the occasion ofit.  The River Waveney is a considerable river, and of adeep and full channel, navigable for large barges as high asBeccles; it runs for a course of about fifty miles, between thetwo counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, as a boundary to both; andpushing on, though with a gentle stream, towards the sea, no onewould doubt, but, that when they see the river growing broaderand deeper, and going directly towards the sea, even to the edgeof the beach—that is to say, within a mile of the mainocean—no stranger, I say, but would expect to see itsentrance into the sea at that place, and a noble harbour forships at the mouth of it; when on a sudden, the land rising highby the seaside, crosses the head of the river, like a dam, checksthe whole course of it, and it returns, bending its course west,for two miles, or thereabouts; and then turning north, throughanother long course of meadows (joining to those just nowmentioned) seeks out the River Yare, that it may join its waterwith hers, and find their way to the sea together.

Some of our historians tell a long, fabulous story of thisriver being once open, and a famous harbour for ships belongingto a town of Lowestoft adjoining; but that the town of Yarmouthenvying the prosperity of the said town of Lowestoft, made warupon them; and that after many bloody battles, as well by sea asby land, they came at last to a decisive action at sea with theirrespective fleets, and the victory fell to the Yarmouth men, theLowestoft fleet being overthrown and utterly destroyed; and thatupon this victory, the Yarmouth men either actually did stop upthe mouth of the said river, or obliged the vanquished Lowestoftmen to do it themselves, and bound them never to attempt to openit again.

I believe my share of this story, and I recommend no more ofit to the reader; adding, that I see no authority for therelation, neither do the relators agree either in the time of it,or in the particulars of the fact; that is to say, in whosereign, or under what government all this happened; in what year,and the like; so I satisfy myself with transcribing the matter offact, and then leave it as I find it.

In this vast tract of meadows are fed a prodigious number ofblack cattle which are said to be fed up for the fattest beef,though not the largest in England; and the quantity is so great,as that they not only supply the city of Norwich, the town ofYarmouth, and county adjacent, but send great quantities of themweekly in all the winter season to London.

And this in particular is worthy remark, that the gross of allthe Scots cattle which come yearly into England are broughthither, being brought to a small village lying north of the cityof Norwich, called St. Faith’s, where the Norfolk graziersgo and buy them.

These Scots runts, so they call them, coming out of the coldand barren mountains of the Highlands in Scotland, feed soeagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes, that they thrive inan unusual manner, and grow monstrously fat; and the beef is sodelicious for taste, that the inhabitants prefer them to theEnglish cattle, which are much larger and fairer to look at; andthey may very well do so.  Some have told me, and I believewith good judgment, that there are above forty thousand of theseScots cattle fed in this county every year, and most of them inthe said marshes between Norwich, Beccles, and Yarmouth.

Yarmouth is an ancient town, much older than Norwich; and atpresent, though not standing on so much ground, yet better built;much more complete; for number of inhabitants, not much inferior;and for wealth, trade, and advantage of its situation, infinitelysuperior to Norwich.

It is placed on a peninsula between the River Yare and thesea; the two last lying parallel to one another, and the town inthe middle.  The river lies on the west side of the town,and being grown very large and deep, by a conflux of all therivers on this side the county, forms the haven; and the townfacing to the west also, and open to the river, makes the finestquay in England, if not in Europe, not inferior even to that ofMarseilles itself.

The ships ride here so close, and, as it were, keeping up oneanother, with their headfasts on shore, that for half a miletogether they go across the stream with their bowsprits over theland, their bows, or heads touching the very wharf; so that onemay walk from ship to ship as on a floating bridge, all along bythe shore-side.  The quay reaching from the drawbridgealmost to the south gate, is so spacious and wide, that in someplaces it is near one hundred yards from the houses to thewharf.  In this pleasant and agreeable range of houses aresome very magnificent buildings, and among the rest, the CustomHouse and Town Hall, and some merchant’s houses, which looklike little palaces rather than the dwelling-houses of privatemen.

The greatest defect of this beautiful town seems to be that,though it is very rich and increasing in wealth and trade, andconsequently in people, there is not room to enlarge the town bybuilding, which would be certainly done much more than it is, butthat the river on the land side prescribes them, except at thenorth end without the gate; and even there the land is not veryagreeable.  But had they had a larger space within the gatesthere would before now have been many spacious streets of noblefine buildings erected, as we see is done in some other thrivingtowns in England, as at Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Frome,etc.

The quay and the harbour of this town during the fishing fair,as they call it, which is every Michaelmas, one sees the landcovered with people, and the river with barques and boats, busyday and night landing and carrying of the herrings, which theycatch here in such prodigious quantities, that it isincredible.  I happened to be there during their fishingfair, when I told in one tide 110 barques and fishing vesselscoming up the river all laden with herrings, and all taken thenight before; and this was besides what was brought on shore onthe Dean (that is the seaside of the town) by open boats, whichthey call cobles, and which often bring in two or three last offish at a time.  The barques often bring in ten last apiece.

This fishing fair begins on Michaelmas Day, and lasts all themonth of October, by which time the herrings draw off to sea,shoot their spawn, and are no more fit for the merchant’sbusiness—at least, not those that are takenthereabouts.

The quantity of herrings that are caught in this season arediversely accounted for.  Some have said that the towns ofYarmouth and Lowestoft only have taken 40,000 last in aseason.  I will not venture to confirm that report; but thisI have heard the merchants themselves say, viz., that they havecured—that is to say, hanged and dried in thesmoke—40,000 barrels of merchantable red herrings in oneseason, which is in itself (though far short of the other) yet avery considerable article; and it is to be added that this isbesides all the herrings consumed in the country towns of boththose populous counties for thirty miles from the sea, whithervery great quantities are carried every tide during the wholeseason.

But this is only one branch of the great trade carried on inthis town.  Another part of this commerce is in theexporting these herrings after they are cured; and for this theirmerchants have a great trade to Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Messina,and Venice; as also to Spain and Portugal, also exporting withtheir herring very great quantities of worsted stuffs, and stuffsmade of silk and worsted, camblets, etc., the manufactures of theneighbouring city of Norwich and of the places adjacent.

Besides this, they carry on a very considerable trade withHolland, whose opposite neighbours they are; and a vast quantityof woollen manufactures they export to the Dutch everyyear.  Also they have a fishing trade to the North Seas forwhite fish, which from the place are called the North Seacod.

They have also a considerable trade to Norway and to theBaltic, from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oakenplank, balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas,and sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which theygenerally have a consumption for in their own port, where theybuild a very great number of ships every year, besides refittingand repairing the old.

Add to this the coal trade between Newcastle and the river ofThames, in which they are so improved of late years that theyhave now a greater share of it than any other town in England,and have quite worked the Ipswich men out of it who had formerlythe chief share of the colliery in their hands.

For the carrying on all these trades they must have a verygreat number of ships, either of their own or employed by them:and it may in some measure be judged of by this that in the year1697, I had an account from the town register that there was then1,123 sail of ships using the sea and belonged to the town,besides such ships as the merchants of Yarmouth might beconcerned in, and be part owners of, belonging to any otherports.

To all this I must add, without compliment to the town or tothe people, that the merchants, and even the generality oftraders of Yarmouth, have a very good reputation in trade as wellabroad as at home for men of fair and honourable dealing,punctual and just in their performing their engagements and indischarging commissions; and their seamen, as well masters asmariners, are justly esteemed among the ablest and most expertnavigators in England.

This town, however populous and large, was ever contained inone parish, and had but one church; but within these two yearsthey have built another very fine church near the south end ofthe town.  The old church is dedicated to St. Nicholas, andwas built by that famous Bishop of Norwich, William Herbert, whoflourished in the reign of William II., and Henry I., William ofMalmesbury, calls him Vir Pecuniosus; he might have calledhim Vir Pecuniosissimus, considering the times he livedin, and the works of charity and munificence which he has left aswitnesses of his immense riches; for he built the CathedralChurch, the Priory for sixty monks, the Bishop’s Palace,and the parish church of St. Leonard, all in Norwich; this greatchurch at Yarmouth, the Church of St. Margaret at Lynn, and ofSt. Mary at Elmham.  He removed the episcopal see fromThetford to Norwich, and instituted the Cluniack Monks atThetford, and gave them or built them a house.  This oldchurch is very large, and has a high spire, which is a usefulsea-mark.

Here is one of the finest market-places and the best servedwith provisions in England, London excepted; and the inhabitantsare so multiplied in a few years that they seem to want room intheir town rather than people to fill it, as I have observedabove.

The streets are all exactly straight from north to south, withlanes or alleys, which they call rows, crossing them in straightlines also from east to west, so that it is the most regularbuilt town in England, and seems to have been built all at once;or that the dimensions of the houses and extent of the streetswere laid out by consent.

They have particular privileges in this town and ajurisdiction by which they can try, condemn, and execute inespecial cases without waiting for a warrant from above; and thisthey exerted once very smartly in executing a captain of one ofthe king’s ships of war in the reign of King Charles II.for a murder committed in the street, the circumstance of whichdid indeed call for justice; but some thought they would not haveventured to exert their powers as they did.  However, Inever heard that the Government resented it or blamed them forit.

It is also a very well-governed town, and I have nowhere inEngland observed the Sabbath day so exactly kept, or the breachso continually punished, as in this place, which I name to theirhonour.

Among all these regularities it is no wonder if we do not findabundance of revelling, or that there is little encouragement toassemblies, plays, and gaming meetings at Yarmouth as in someother places; and yet I do not see that the ladies here comebehind any of the neighbouring counties, either in beauty,breeding, or behaviour; to which may be added too, not at all totheir disadvantage, that they generally go beyond them infortunes.

From Yarmouth I resolved to pursue my first design, viz., toview the seaside on this coast, which is particularly famous forbeing one of the most dangerous and most fatal to the sailors inall England—I may say in all Britain—and the more sobecause of the great number of ships which are continually goingand coming this way in their passage between London and all thenorthern coasts of Great Britain.  Matters of antiquity arenot my inquiry, but principally observations on the present stateof things, and, if possible, to give such accounts of thingsworthy of recording as have never been observed before; and thisleads me the more directly to mention the commerce and thenavigation when I come to towns upon the coast as what fewwriters have yet meddled with.

The reason of the dangers of this particular coast are foundin the situation of the county and in the course of ships sailingthis way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:—Theshore from the mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roadslies in a straight line from SSE. toNNW., the land beingon the W. or larboard side.

From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point ofland in the county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyondYarmouth, the shore falls off for nearly sixty miles to the west,as far as Lynn and Boston, till the shore of Lincolnshire tendsnorth again for about sixty miles more as far as the Humber,whence the coast of Yorkshire, or Holderness, which is the eastriding, shoots out again into the sea, to the Spurn and toFlamborough Head, as far east, almost, as the shore of Norfolkhad given back at Winterton, making a very deep gulf or baybetween those two points of Winterton and the Spurn Head; so thatthe ships going north are obliged to stretch away to sea fromWintertonness, and leaving the sight of land in that deep baywhich I have mentioned, that reaches to Lynn and the shore ofLincolnshire, they go, I say, N. or still NNW. to meet the shoreof Holderness, which I said runs out into the sea again at theSpurn; and the first land they make or desire to make, is calledas above, Flamborough Head, so that Wintertonness and FlamboroughHead are the two extremes of this course, there is, as I said,the Spurn Head indeed between; but as it lies too far in towardsthe Humber, they keep out to the north to avoid coming nearit.

In like manner the ships which come from the north, leave theshore at Flamborough Head, and stretch away SSE. for YarmouthRoads; and they first land they make is Wintertonness (asabove).  Now, the danger of the place is this: if the shipscoming from the north are taken with a hard gale of wind from theSE., or from any point between NE. and SE., so that they cannot,as the seamen call it, weather Wintertonness, they are therebykept within that deep bay; and if the wind blows hard, are oftenin danger of running on shore upon the rocks about Cromer, on thenorth coast of Norfolk, or stranding upon the flat shore betweenCromer and Wells; all the relief they have, is good ground tackleto ride it out, which is very hard to do there, the sea comingvery high upon them; or if they cannot ride it out then, to runinto the bottom of the great bay I mentioned, to Lynn or Boston,which is a very difficult and desperate push: so that sometimesin this distress whole fleets have been lost here altogether.

The like is the danger to ships going northward, if afterpassing by Winterton they are taken short with a north-east wind,and cannot put back into the Roads, which very often happens,then they are driven upon the same coast, and embayed just as thelatter.  The danger on the north part of this bay is not thesame, because if ships going or coming should be taken short onthis side Flamborough, there is the river Humber open to them,and several good roads to have recourse to, as Burlington Bay,Grimsby Road, and the Spurn Head, and others, where they rideunder shelter.

The dangers of this place being thus considered, it is nowonder, that upon the shore beyond Yarmouth there are no lessthan four lighthouses kept flaming every night, besides thelights at Castor, north of the town, and at Goulston S., all ofwhich are to direct the sailors to keep a good offing in case ofbad weather, and to prevent their running into Cromer Bay, whichthe seamen call the devil’s throat.

As I went by land from Yarmouth northward, along the shoretowards Cromer aforesaid, and was not then fully master of thereason of these things, I was surprised to see, in all the wayfrom Winterton, that the farmers and country people had scarce abarn, or a shed, or a stable, nay, not the pales of their yardsand gardens, not a hogstye, not a necessary house, but what wasbuilt of old planks, beams, wales, and timbers, etc., the wrecksof ships, and ruins of mariners’ and merchants’fortunes; and in some places were whole yards filled and piled upvery high with the same stuff laid up, as I supposed to sell forthe like building purposes, as there should he occasion.

About the year 1692 (I think it was that year) there was amelancholy example of what I have said of this place: a fleet of200 sail of light colliers (so they call the ships boundnorthward empty to fetch coals from Newcastle to London) went outof Yarmouth Roads with a fair wind, to pursue their voyage, andwere taken short with a storm of wind at NE. after they were pastWintertonness, a few leagues; some of them, whose masters were alittle more wary than the rest, or perhaps, who made a betterjudgment of things, or who were not so far out as the rest,tacked, and put back in time, and got safe into the roads; butthe rest pushing on in hopes to keep out to sea, and weather it,were by the violence of the storm driven back, when they were toofar embayed to weather Wintertonness as above, and so were forcedto run west, everyone shifting for themselves as well as theycould; some run away for Lynn Deeps, but few of them (the nightbeing so dark) could find their way in there; some, but very few,rode it out at a distance; the rest, being above 140 sail, wereall driven on shore and dashed to pieces, and very few of thepeople on board were saved: at the very same unhappy juncture, afleet of laden ships were coming from the north, and being justcrossing the same bay, were forcibly driven into it, not able toweather the Ness, and so were involved in the same ruin as thelight fleet was; also some coasting vessels laden with corn fromLynn and Wells, and bound for Holland, were with the same unhappyluck just come out to begin their voyage, and some of them lay atanchor; these also met with the same misfortune, so that, in thewhole, above 200 sail of ships, and above a thousand people,perished in the disaster of that one miserable night, very fewescaping.

Cromer is a market town close to the shore of this dangerouscoast.  I know nothing it is famous for (besides it beingthus the terror of the sailors) except good lobsters, which aretaken on that coast in great numbers and carried to Norwich, andin such quantities sometimes too as to be conveyed by sea toLondon.

Farther within the land, and between this place and Norwich,are several good market towns, and innumerable villages, alldiligently applying to the woollen manufacture, and the countryis exceedingly fruitful and fertile, as well in corn as inpastures; particularly, which was very pleasant to see, thepheasants were in such great plenty as to be seen in the stubbleslike cocks and hens—a testimony though, by the way, thatthe county had more tradesmen than gentlemen in it; indeed, thispart is so entirely given up to industry, that what with theseafaring men on the one side, and the manufactures on the other,we saw no idle hands here, but every man busy on the main affairof life, that is to say, getting money; some of the principal ofthese towns are:—Alsham, North Walsham, South Walsham,Worsted, Caston, Reepham, Holt, Saxthorp, St. Faith’s,Blikling, and many others.  Near the last, Sir John Hobart,of an ancient family in this county, has a noble seat, but oldbuilt.  This is that St. Faith’s, where the droversbring their black cattle to sell to the Norfolk graziers, as isobserved above.

From Cromer we ride on the strand or open shore to WeyburnHope, the shore so flat that in some places the tide ebbs outnear two miles.  From Weyburn west lies Clye, where thereare large salt-works and very good salt made, which is sold allover the county, and sometimes sent to Holland and to theBaltic.  From Clye we go to Masham and to Wells, all townson the coast, in each whereof there is a very considerable tradecarried on with Holland for corn, which that part of the countyis very full of.  I say nothing of the great trade drivenhere from Holland, back again to England, because I take it to bea trade carried on with much less honesty than advantage,especially while the clandestine trade, or the art of smugglingwas so much in practice: what it is now, is not to my presentpurpose.

Near this town lie The Seven Burnhams, as they are called,that is to say, seven small towns, all called by the same name,and each employed in the same trade of carrying corn to Holland,and bringing back,—etc.

From hence we turn to the south-west to Castle Rising, an olddecayed borough town, with perhaps not ten families in it, whichyet (to the scandal of our prescription right) sends two membersto the British Parliament, being as many as the City of Norwichitself or any town in the kingdom, London excepted, can do.

On our left we see Walsingham, an ancient town, famous for theold ruins of a monastery of note there, and the Shrine of ourLady, as noted as that of St. Thomas-à-Becket atCanterbury, and for little else.

Near this place are the seats of the two allied families ofthe Lord Viscount Townsend and Robert Walpole, Esq.; the latterat this time one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury andMinister of State, and the former one of the principalSecretaries of State to King George, of which again.

From hence we went to Lynn, another rich and populous thrivingport-town.  It stands on more ground than the town ofYarmouth, and has, I think, parishes, yet I cannot allow that ithas more people than Yarmouth, if so many.  It is abeautiful, well built, and well situated town, at the mouth ofthe River Ouse, and has this particular attending it, which givesit a vast advantage in trade; namely, that there is the greatestextent of inland navigation here of any port in England, Londonexcepted.  The reason whereof is this, that there are morenavigable rivers empty themselves here into the sea, includingthe washes, which are branches of the same port, than at any onemouth of waters in England, except the Thames and theHumber.  By these navigable rivers, the merchants of Lynnsupply about six counties wholly, and three counties in part,with their goods, especially wine and coals, viz., by the littleOuse, they send their goods to Brandon and Thetford, by the Laketo Mildenhall, Barton Mills, and St. Edmundsbury; by the RiverGrant to Cambridge, by the great Ouse itself to Ely, to St. Ives,to St. Neots, to Barford Bridge, and to Bedford; by the RiverNyne to Peterborough; by the drains and washes to Wisbeach, toSpalding, Market Deeping, and Stamford; besides the severalcounties, into which these goods are carried by land-carriage,from the places, where the navigation of those rivers end; whichhas given rise to this observation on the town of Lynn, that theybring in more coals than any sea-port between London andNewcastle; and import more wines than any port in England, exceptLondon and Bristol; their trade to Norway and to the Baltic Seais also great in proportion, and of late years they have extendedtheir trade farther to the southward.

Here are more gentry, and consequently is more gaiety in thistown than in Yarmouth, or even in Norwich itself—the placeabounding in very good company.

The situation of this town renders it capable of being madevery strong, and in the late wars it was so; a line offortification being drawn round it at a distance from the walls;the ruins, or rather remains of which works appear very fair tothis day; nor would it be a hard matter to restore the bastions,with the ravelins, and counterscarp, upon any sudden emergency,to a good state of defence: and that in a little time, asufficient number of workmen being employed, especially becausethey are able to fill all their ditches with water from the sea,in such a manner as that it cannot be drawn off.

There is in the market-place of this town a very fine statueof King William on horseback, erected at the charge of thetown.  The Ouse is mighty large and deep, close to the verytown itself, and ships of good burthen may come up to the quay;but there is no bridge, the stream being too strong and thebottom moorish and unsound; nor, for the same reason, is theanchorage computed the best in the world; but there are goodroads farther down.

They pass over here in boats into the fen country, and overthe famous washes into Lincolnshire, but the passage is verydangerous and uneasy, and where passengers often miscarry and arelost; but then it is usually on their venturing at impropertimes, and without the guides, which if they would be persuadednot to do, they would very rarely fail of going or comingsafe.

From Lynn I bent my course to Downham, where is an ugly woodenbridge over the Ouse; from whence we passed the fen country toWisbeach, but saw nothing that way to tempt our curiosity butdeep roads, innumerable drains and dykes of water, all navigable,and a rich soil, the land bearing a vast quantity of good hemp,but a base unwholesome air; so we came back to Ely, whosecathedral, standing in a level flat country, is seen far andwide, and of which town, when the minster, so they call it, isdescribed, everything remarkable is said that there is room tosay.  And of the minster, this is the most remarkable thingthat I could hear it, namely, that some of it is so ancient,totters so much with every gust of wind, looks so like a decay,and seems so near it, that whenever it does fall, all that it islikely will be thought strange in it will be that it did not falla hundred years sooner.

From hence we came over the Ouse, and in a few miles toNewmarket.  In our way, near Snaybell, we saw a noble seatof the late Admiral Russell, now Earl of Orford, a name madefamous by the glorious victory obtained under his command overthe French fleet and the burning their ships at La Hogue—avictory equal in glory to, and infinitely more glorious to theEnglish nation in particular, than that at Blenheim, and, aboveall, more to the particular advantage of the confederacy, becauseit so broke the heart of the naval power of France that they havenot fully recovered it to this day.  But of this victory itmust be said it was owing to the haughty, rash, and insolentorders given by the King of France to his admiral, viz., to fightthe confederate fleet wherever he found them, without leavingroom for him to use due caution if he found them too strong,which pride of France was doubtless a fate upon them, and gave acheap victory to the confederates, the French coming down rashly,and with the most impolitic bravery, with about five-and-fortysail to attack between seventy and eighty sail, by which meansthey met their ruin.  Whereas, had their own fleet beenjoined, it might have cost more blood to have mastered them if ithad been done at all.

The situation of this house is low, and on the edge of the fencountry, but the building is very fine, the avenues noble, andthe gardens perfectly finished.  The apartments also arerich, and I see nothing wanting but a family and heirs to sustainthe glory and inheritance of the illustrious ancestor who raisedit—sed caret pedibus; these are wanting.

Being come to Newmarket in the month of October, I had theopportunity to see the horse races and a great concourse of thenobility and gentry, as well from London as from all parts ofEngland, but they were all so intent, so eager, so busy upon thesharping part of the sport—their wagers and bets—thatto me they seemed just as so many horse-coursers in Smithfield,descending (the greatest of them) from their high dignity andquality to picking one another’s pockets, and biting oneanother as much as possible, and that with such eagerness as thatit might be said they acted without respect to faith, honour, orgood manners.

There was Mr. Frampton the oldest, and, as some say, thecunningest jockey in England; one day he lost one thousandguineas, the next he won two thousand; and so alternately he madeas light of throwing away five hundred or one thousand pounds ata time as other men do of their pocket-money, and as perfectlycalm, cheerful, and unconcerned when he had lost one thousandpounds as when he had won it.  On the other side there wasSir R Fagg, of Sussex, of whom fame says he has the most in himand the least to show for it (relating to jockeyship) of any manthere, yet he often carried the prize.  His horses, theysaid, were all cheats, how honest soever their master was, for hescarce ever produced a horse but he looked like what he was not,and was what nobody could expect him to be.  If he was aslight as the wind, and could fly like a meteor, he was sure tolook as clumsy, and as dirty, and as much like a cart-horse asall the cunning of his master and the grooms could make him, andjust in this manner he beat some of the greatest gamesters in thefield.

I was so sick of the jockeying part that I left the crowdabout the posts and pleased myself with observing the horses: howthe creatures yielded to all the arts and managements of theirmasters; how they took their airings in sport, and played withthe daily heats which they ran over the course before the grandday.  But how, as knowing the difference equally with theirriders, would they exert their utmost strength at the time of therace itself!  And that to such an extremity that one or twoof them died in the stable when they came to be rubbed after thefirst heat.

Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus at Rome seeing theancient games and the racings of the chariots and horsemen, andin this warmth of my imagination I pleased and diverted myselfmore and in a more noble manner than I could possibly do in thecrowds of gentlemen at the weighing and starting-posts and attheir coming in, or at their meetings at the coffee-houses andgaming-tables after the races were over, where there was littleor nothing to be seen but what was the subject of just reproachto them and reproof from every wise man that looked uponthem.

N.B.—Pray take it with you, as you go, you see no ladiesat Newmarket, except a few of the neighbouring gentlemen’sfamilies, who come in their coaches on any particular day to seea race, and so go home again directly.

As I was pleasing myself with what was to be seen here, I wentin the intervals of the sport to see the fine seats of thegentlemen in the neighbouring county, for this part of Suffolk,being an open champaign country and a healthy air, is formed forpleasure and all kinds of country diversion, Nature, as it were,inviting the gentlemen to visit her where she was fully preparedto receive them, in conformity to which kind summons they came,for the country is, as it were, covered with fine palaces of thenobility and pleasant seats of the gentlemen.

The Earl of Orford’s house I have mentioned already; thenext is Euston Hall, the seat of the Duke of Grafton.  Itlies in the open country towards the side of Norfolk, not farfrom Thetford, a place capable of all that is pleasant anddelightful in Nature, and improved by art to every extreme thatNature is able to produce.

From thence I went to Rushbrook, formerly the seat of thenoble family of Jermyns, lately Lord Dover, and now of the houseof Davers.  Here Nature, for the time I was there, droopedand veiled all the beauties of which she once boasted, the familybeing in tears and the house shut up, Sir Robert Davers, the headthereof, and knight of the shire for the county of Suffolk, andwho had married the eldest daughter of the late Lord Dover, beingjust dead, and the corpse lying there in its funeral form ofceremony, not yet buried.  Yet all looked lovely in theirsorrow, and a numerous issue promising and grown up intimatedthat the family of Davers would still flourish, and that thebeauties of Rushbrook, the mansion of the family, were not formedwith so much art in vain or to die with the presentpossessor.

After this we saw Brently, the seat of the Earl of Dysert, andthe ancient palace of my Lord Cornwallis, with several others ofexquisite situation, and adorned with the beauties both of artand Nature, so that I think any traveller from abroad, who woulddesire to see how the English gentry live, and what pleasuresthey enjoy, should come into Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and takebut a light circuit among the country seats of the gentlemen onthis side only, and they would be soon convinced that not France,no, not Italy itself, can outdo them in proportion to the climatethey lived in.

I had still the county of Cambridge to visit to complete thistour of the eastern part of England, and of that I come now tospeak.

We enter Cambridgeshire out of Suffolk, with all the advantagein the world; the county beginning upon those pleasant andagreeable plains called Newmarket Heath, where passing theDevil’s Ditch, which has nothing worth notice but its name,and that but fabulous too, from the hills called Gogmagog, we seea rich and pleasant vale westward, covered with corn-fields,gentlemen’s seats, villages, and at a distance, to crownall the rest, that ancient and truly famous town and universityof Cambridge, capital of the county, and receiving its name from,if not, as some say, giving name to it; for if it be true thatthe town takes its name of Cambridge from its bridge over theriver Cam, then certainly the shire or county, upon the divisionof England into counties, had its name from the town, andCambridgeshire signifies no more or less than the county of whichCambridge is the capital town.

As my business is not to lay out the geographical situation ofplaces, I say nothing of the buttings and boundings of thiscounty.  It lies on the edge of the great level, called bythe people here the Fen Country; and great part, if not all, theIsle of Ely lies in this county and Norfolk.  The rest ofCambridgeshire is almost wholly a corn country, and of that cornfive parts in six of all they sow is barley, which is generallysold to Ware and Royston, and other great malting towns inHertfordshire, and is the fund from whence that vast quantity ofmalt, called Hertfordshire malt, is made, which is esteemed thebest in England.  As Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk are takenup in manufactures, and famed for industry, this county has nomanufacture at all; nor are the poor, except the husbandmen,famed for anything so much as idleness and sloth, to theirscandal be it spoken.  What the reason of it is I knownot.

It is scarce possible to talk of anything in Cambridgeshirebut Cambridge itself; whether it be that the county has so littleworth speaking of in it, or, that the town has so much, that Ileave to others; however, as I am making modern observations, notwriting history, I shall look into the county, as well as intothe colleges, for what I have to say.

As I said, I first had a view of Cambridge from Gogmagoghills; I am to add that there appears on the mountain that goesby this name, an ancient camp or fortification, that lies on thetop of the hill, with a double, or rather treble, rampart andditch, which most of our writers say was neither Roman nor Saxon,but British.  I am to add that King James II. caused aspacious stable to be built in the area of this camp for hisrunning homes, and made old Mr. Frampton, whom I mentioned above,master or inspector of them.  The stables remain stillthere, though they are not often made use of.  As wedescended westward we saw the Fen country on our right, almostall covered with water like a sea, the Michaelmas rains havingbeen very great that year, they had sent down great floods ofwater from the upland countries, and those fens being, as may bevery properly said, the sink of no less than thirteencounties—that is to say, that all the water, or most partof the water, of thirteen counties falls into them; they areoften thus overflowed.  The rivers which thus emptythemselves into these fens, and which thus carry off the water,are the Cam or Grant, the Great Ouse and Little Ouse, the Nene,the Welland, and the river which runs from Bury to MildenHall.  The counties which these rivers drain, as above, areas follows:—

Those marked with (*) empty alltheir waters this way, the rest but in part.

In a word, all the water of the middle part of England whichdoes not run into the Thames or the Trent, comes down into thesefens.

In these fens are abundance of those admirable pieces of artcalled decoys that is to say, places so adapted for the harbourand shelter of wild fowl, and then furnished with a breed ofthose they call decoy ducks, who are taught to allure and enticetheir kind to the places they belong to, that it is incrediblewhat quantities of wild fowl of all sorts, duck, mallard, teal,widgeon, &c., they take in those decoys every week during theseason; it may, indeed, be guessed at a little by this, thatthere is a decoy not far from Ely which pays to the landlord, SirThomas Hare, £500 a year rent, besides the charge ofmaintaining a great number of servants for the management; andfrom which decoy alone, they assured me at St. Ives (a town onthe Ouse, where the fowl they took was always brought to be sentto London) that they generally sent up three thousand couple aweek.

There are more of these about Peterborough, who send the fowlup twice a week in waggon-loads at a time, whose waggons beforethe late Act of Parliament to regulate carriers I have seen drawnby ten and twelve horses a-piece, they were laden so heavy.

As these fens appear covered with water, so I observed, too,that they generally at this latter part of the year appear alsocovered with fogs, so that when the downs and higher grounds ofthe adjacent country were gilded with the beams of the sun, theIsle of Ely looked as if wrapped up in blankets, and nothing tobe seen but now and then the lantern or cupola of ElyMinster.

One could hardly see this from the hills and not pity the manythousands of families that were bound to or confined in thosefogs, and had no other breath to draw than what must be mixedwith those vapours, and that steam which so universallyoverspreads the country.  But notwithstanding this, thepeople, especially those that are used to it, live unconcerned,and as healthy as other folks, except now and then an ague, whichthey make light of, and there are great numbers of very ancientpeople among them.

I now draw near to Cambridge, to which I fancy I look as if Iwas afraid to come, having made so many circumlocutionsbeforehand; but I must yet make another digression before I enterthe town (for in my way, and as I came in from Newmarket, aboutthe beginning of September), I cannot omit, that I camenecessarily through Stourbridge Fair, which was then in itsheight.

If it is a diversion worthy a book to treat of trifles, suchas the gaiety of Bury Fair, it cannot be very unpleasant,especially to the trading part of the world, to say something ofthis fair, which is not only the greatest in the whole nation,but in the world; nor, if I may believe those who have seen themall, is the fair at Leipzig in Saxony, the mart atFrankfort-on-the-Main, or the fairs at Nuremberg, or Augsburg,any way to compare to this fair at Stourbridge.

It is kept in a large corn-field, near Casterton, extendingfrom the side of the river Cam, towards the road, for about halfa mile square.

If the husbandmen who rent the land, do not get their corn offbefore a certain day in August, the fair-keepers may trample itunder foot and spoil it to build their booths, or tents, for allthe fair is kept in tents and booths.  On the other hand, tobalance that severity, if the fair-keepers have not done theirbusiness of the fair, and removed and cleared the field byanother certain day in September, the ploughmen may come inagain, with plough and cart, and overthrow all, and trample intothe dirt; and as for the filth, dung, straw, etc. necessarilyleft by the fair-keepers, the quantity of which is very great, itis the farmers’ fees, and makes them full amends for thetrampling, riding, and carting upon, and hardening theground.

It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstancesof this fair exactly; the shops are placed in rows like streets,whereof one is called Cheapside; and here, as in several otherstreets, are all sorts of trades, who sell by retail, and whocome principally from London with their goods; scarce any tradesare omitted—goldsmiths, toyshops, brasiers, turners,milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers,china-warehouses, and in a word all trades that can be named inLondon; with coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, andeating-houses, innumerable, and all in tents, and booths, asabove.

This great street reaches from the road, which as I said goesfrom Cambridge to Newmarket, turning short out of it to the righttowards the river, and holds in a line near half a mile quitedown to the river-side: in another street parallel with the roadare like rows of booths, but larger, and more intermingled withwholesale dealers; and one side, passing out of this last streetto the left hand, is a formal great square, formed by the largestbooths, built in that form, and which they call the Duddery;whence the name is derived, and what its signification is, Icould never yet learn, though I made all possible search intoit.  The area of this square is about 80 to 100 yards, wherethe dealers have room before every booth to take down, and opentheir packs, and to bring in waggons to load and unload.

This place is separated, and peculiar to the wholesale dealersin the woollen manufacture.  Here the booths or tents are ofa vast extent, have different apartments, and the quantities ofgoods they bring are so great, that the insides of them look likeanother Blackwell Hall, being as vast warehouses piled up withgoods to the top.  In this Duddery, as I have been informed,there have been sold one hundred thousand pounds worth of woollenmanufactures in less than a week’s time, besides theprodigious trade carried on here, by wholesale men, from London,and all parts of England, who transact their business wholly intheir pocket-books, and meeting their chapmen from all parts,make up their accounts, receive money chiefly in bills, and takeorders: These they say exceed by far the sales of goods actuallybrought to the fair, and delivered in kind; it being frequent forthe London wholesale men to carry back orders from their dealersfor ten thousand pounds’ worth of goods a man, and somemuch more.  This especially respects those people, who dealin heavy goods, as wholesale grocers, salters, brasiers,iron-merchants, wine-merchants, and the like; but does notexclude the dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially inmercery goods of all sorts, the dealers in which generally managetheir business in this manner.

Here are clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield andHuddersfield in Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, etc., inLancashire, with vast quantities of Yorkshire cloths, kerseys,pennistons, cottons, etc., with all sorts of Manchester ware,fustiains, and things made of cotton wool; of which the quantityis so great, that they told me there were near a thousandhorse-packs of such goods from that side of the country, andthese took up a side and half of the Duddery at least; also apart of a street of booths were taken up with upholsterer’sware, such as tickings, sackings, kidderminster stuffs, blankets,rugs, quilts, etc.

In the Duddery I saw one warehouse, or booth with sixapartments in it, all belonging to a dealer in Norwich stuffsonly, and who, they said, had there above twenty thousand poundsvalue in those goods, and no other.

Western goods had their share here also, and several boothswere filled as full with serges, duroys, druggets, shalloons,cantaloons, Devonshire kerseys, etc., from Exeter, Taunton,Bristol, and other parts west, and some from London also.

But all this is still outdone at least in show, by twoarticles, which are the peculiars of this fair, and do not begintill the other part of the fair, that is to say for the woollenmanufacture begins to draw to a close.  These are the wooland the hops; as for the hops, there is scarce any price fixedfor hops in England, till they know how they sell at Stourbridgefair; the quantity that appears in the fair is indeed prodigious,and they, as it were, possess a large part of the field on whichthe fair is kept to themselves; they are brought directly fromChelmsford in Essex, from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent, andfrom Farnham in Surrey, besides what are brought from London, thegrowth of those and other places.

Enquiring why this fair should be thus, of all other places inEngland, the centre of that trade; and so great a quantity of sobulky a commodity be carried thither so far; I was answered byone thoroughly acquainted with that matter thus: the hops, saidhe, for this part of England, grow principally in the twocounties of Surrey and Kent, with an exception only to the townof Chelmsford in Essex, and there are very few planted anywhereelse.

There are indeed in the west of England some quantitiesgrowing: as at Wilton, near Salisbury; at Hereford andBroomsgrove, near Wales, and the like; but the quantity isinconsiderable, and the places remote, so that none of them cometo London.

As to the north of England, they formerly used but few hopsthere, their drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which requiredno hops, and consequently they planted no hops in all that partof England, north of the Trent; nor did I ever see one acre ofhop-ground planted beyond Trent in my observation; but as forsome years past, they not only brew great quantities of beer inthe north, but also use hops in the brewing their ale much morethan they did before; so they all come south of Trent to buytheir hops; and here being quantities brought, it is great partof their back carriage into Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire,Derbyshire, Lancashire, and all these counties; nay, of late,since the Union, even to Scotland itself; for I must not omithere also to mention, that the river Grant, or Cam, which runsclose by the north-west side of the fair in its way fromCambridge to Ely, is navigable, and that by this means, all heavygoods are brought even to the fair-field, by water carriage fromLondon and other parts; first to the port of Lynn, and then inbarges up the Ouse, from the Ouse into the Cam, and so, as I say,to the very edge of the fair.

In like manner great quantities of heavy goods, and the hopsamong the rest, are sent from the fair to Lynn by water, andshipped there for the Humber, to Hull, York, etc., and forNewcastle-upon-Tyne, and by Newcastle, even to Scotlanditself.  Now as there is still no planting of hops in thenorth, though a great consumption, and the consumption increasingdaily, this, says my friend, is one reason why at Stourbridgefair there is so great a demand for the hops.  He added,that besides this, there were very few hops, if any worth naming,growing in all the counties even on this side Trent, which wereabove forty miles from London; those counties depending onStourbridge fair for their supply, so the counties of Suffolk,Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, Lincoln, Leicester,Rutland, and even to Stafford, Warwick, and Worcestershire,bought most if not all of their hops at Stourbridge fair.

These are the reasons why so great a quantity of hops are seenat this fair, as that it is incredible, considering, too, howremote from this fair the growth of them is as above.

This is likewise a testimony of the prodigious resort of thetrading people of all parts of England to this fair; the quantityof hops that have been sold at one of these fairs is diverselyreported, and some affirm it to be so great, that I dare not copyafter them; but without doubt it is a surprising account,especially in a cheap year.

The next article brought thither is wool, and this of severalsorts, but principally fleece wool, out of Lincolnshire, wherethe longest staple is found; the sheep of those countries beingof the largest breed.

The buyers of this wool are chiefly indeed the manufacturersof Norfolk and Suffolk and Essex, and it is a prodigious quantitythey buy.

Here I saw what I have not observed in any other county ofEngland, namely, a pocket of wool.  This seems to be firstcalled so in mockery, this pocket being so big, that it loads awhole waggon, and reaches beyond the most extreme parts of ithanging over both before and behind, and these ordinarily weigh aton or twenty-five hundredweight of wool, all in one bag.

The quantity of wool only, which has been sold at this placeat one fair, has been said to amount to fifty or sixty thousandpounds in value, some say a great deal more.

By these articles a stranger may make some guess at theimmense trade carried on at this place; what prodigiousquantities of goods are bought and sold here, and what aconfluence of people are seen here from all parts of England.

I might go on here to speak of several other sorts of Englishmanufactures which are brought hither to be sold; as all sorts ofwrought-iron and brass-ware from Birmingham; edged tools, knives,etc., from Sheffield; glass wares and stockings from Nottinghamand Leicester; and an infinite throng of other things of smallervalue every morning.

To attend this fair, and the prodigious conflux of peoplewhich come to it, there are sometimes no less than fifty hackneycoaches which come from London, and ply night and morning tocarry the people to and from Cambridge; for there the gross ofthe people lodge; nay, which is still more strange, there arewherries brought from London on waggons to ply upon the littleriver Cam, and to row people up and down from the town, and fromthe fair as occasion presents.

It is not to be wondered at, if the town of Cambridge cannotreceive, or entertain the numbers of people that come to thisfair; not Cambridge only, but all the towns round are full; nay,the very barns and stables are turned into inns, and made as fitas they can to lodge the meaner sort of people: as for the peoplein the fair, they all universally eat, drink, and sleep in theirbooths and tents; and the said booths are so intermingled withtaverns, coffee-houses, drinking-houses, eating-houses,cook-shops, etc., and all in tents too; and so many butchers andhigglers from all the neighbouring counties come into the fairevery morning with beef, mutton, fowls, butter, bread, cheese,eggs, and such things, and go with them from tent to tent, fromdoor to door, that there is no want of any provisions of anykind, either dressed or undressed.

In a word, the fair is like a well-fortified city, and thereis the least disorder and confusion I believe, that can be seenanywhere with so great a concourse of people.

Towards the latter end of the fair, and when the great hurryof wholesale business begins to be over, the gentry come in fromall parts of the county round; and though they come for theirdiversion, yet it is not a little money they lay out, whichgenerally falls to the share of the retailers, such as toy-shops,goldsmiths, braziers, ironmongers, turners, milliners, mercers,etc., and some loose coins they reserve for the puppet shows,drolls, rope-dancers, and such like, of which there is no want,though not considerable like the rest.  The last day of thefair is the horse-fair, where the whole is closed with both horseand foot races, to divert the meaner sort of people only, fornothing considerable is offered of that kind.  Thus ends thewhole fair, and in less than a week more, there is scarce anysign left that there has been such a thing there, except by theheaps of dung and straw and other rubbish which is left behind,trod into the earth, and which is as good as a summer’sfallow for dunging the land; and as I have said above, pays thehusbandman well for the use of it.

I should have mentioned that here is a court of justice alwaysopen, and held every day in a shed built on purpose in the fair;this is for keeping the peace, and deciding controversies inmatters deriving from the business of the fair.  Themagistrates of the town of Cambridge are judges in this court, asbeing in their jurisdiction, or they holding it by specialprivilege: here they determine matters in a summary way, as ispractised in those we call Pye Powder Courts in other places, oras a Court of Conscience; and they have a final authority withoutappeal.

I come now to the town and university of Cambridge; I say thetown and university, for though they are blended together in thesituation, and the colleges, halls, and houses for literature arepromiscuously scattered up and down among the other parts, andsome even among the meanest of the other buildings, as MagdaleneCollege over the bridge is in particular; yet they are allincorporated together by the name of the university, and aregoverned apart and distinct from the town which they are sointermixed with.

As their authority is distinct from the town, so are theirprivileges, customs, and government; they choose representatives,or members of Parliament for themselves, and the town does thelike for themselves, also apart.

The town is governed by a mayor and aldermen; the universityby a chancellor, and vice-chancellor, etc.  Though theirdwellings are mixed, and seem a little confused, their authorityis not so; in some cases the vice-chancellor may concern himselfin the town, as in searching houses for the scholars at improperhours, removing scandalous women, and the like.

But as the colleges are many, and the gentlemen entertained inthem are a very great number, the trade of the town very muchdepends upon them, and the tradesmen may justly be said to gettheir bread by the colleges; and this is the surest hold theuniversity may be said to have of the townsmen, and by which theysecure the dependence of the town upon them, and consequentlytheir submission.

I remember some years ago a brewer, who being very rich andpopular in the town, and one of their magistrates, had in severalthings so much opposed the university, and insulted theirvice-chancellor, or other heads of houses, that in short theuniversity having no other way to exert themselves, and showtheir resentment, they made a bye-law or order among themselves,that for the future they would not trade with him; and that noneof the colleges, halls, etc., would take any more beer of him;and what followed?  The man indeed braved it out a while,but when he found he could not obtain a revocation of the order,he was fain to leave off his brewhouse, and if I remember right,quitted the town.

Thus I say, interest gives them authority; and there areabundance of reasons why the town should not disoblige theuniversity, as there are some also on the other hand, why theuniversity should not differ to any extremity with the town; nor,such is their prudence, do they let any disputes between them runup to any extremities if they can avoid it.  As for society;to any man who is a lover of learning, or of learned men, here isthe most agreeable under heaven; nor is there any want of mirthand good company of other kinds; but it is to the honour of theuniversity to say, that the governors so well understand theiroffice, and the governed their duty, that here is very littleencouragement given to those seminaries of crime, the assemblies,which are so much boasted of in other places.

Again, as dancing, gaming, intriguing are the three principalarticles which recommend those assemblies; and that generally thetime for carrying on affairs of this kind is the night, andsometimes all night, a time as unseasonable as scandalous; add tothis, that the orders of the university admit no such excesses; Itherefore say, as this is the case, it is to the honour of thewhole body of the university that no encouragement is given tothem here.

As to the antiquity of the university in this town, theoriginals and founders of the several colleges, their revenues,laws, government, and governors, they are so effectually and solargely treated of by other authors, and are so foreign to thefamiliar design of these letters, that I refer my readers to Mr.Camden’s “Britannia” and the author of the“Antiquities of Cambridge,” and other such learnedwriters, by whom they may be fully informed.

The present Vice-Chancellor is Dr. Snape, formerly Master ofEaton School near Windsor, and famous for his dispute with, andevident advantage over, the late Bishop of Bangor in the time ofhis government; the dispute between the University and the Masterof Trinity College has been brought to a head so as to employ thepens of the learned on both sides, but at last prosecuted in ajudicial way so as to deprive Dr. Bentley of all his dignitiesand offices in the university; but the doctor flying to the royalprotection, the university is under a writ of mandamus, to showcause why they do not restore the doctor again, to which it seemsthey demur, and that demur has not, that we hear, been argued, atleast when these sheets were sent to the press.  What willbe the issue time must show.

From Cambridge the road lies north-west on the edge of thefens to Huntingdon, where it joins the great north road.  Onthis side it is all an agreeable corn country as above, adornedwith several seats of gentlemen; but the chief is the noblehouse, seat, or mansion of Wimple or Wimple Hall, formerly builtat a vast expense by the late Earl of Radnor, adorned with allthe natural beauties of situation, and to which was added all themost exquisite contrivances which the best heads could invent tomake it artificially as well as naturally pleasant.

However, the fate of the Radnor family so directing, it wasbought with the whole estate about it by the late Duke ofNewcastle, in a partition of whose immense estate it fell to theRight Honourable the Lord Harley, son and heir-apparent of thepresent Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, in right of the Lady HarrietCavendish, only daughter of the said Duke of Newcastle, who ismarried to his lordship, and brought him this estate and manyother, sufficient to denominate her the richest heiress in GreatBritain.

Here his lordship resides, and has already so recommendedhimself to this county as to be by a great majority chosen Knightof the Shire for the county of Cambridge.

From Cambridge, my design obliging me, and the direct road inpart concurring, I came back through the west part of the countyof Essex, and at Saffron Walden I saw the ruins of the oncelargest and most magnificent pile in all this part ofEngland—viz., Audley End—built by, and decaying with,the noble Dukes and Earls of Suffolk.

A little north of this part of the country rises the RiverStour, which for a course of fifty miles or more parts the twocounties of Suffolk and Essex, passing through or near Haveril,Clare, Cavendish, Halsted, Sudbury, Bowers, Nayland, Stretford,Dedham, Manningtree, and into the sea at Harwich, assisting byits waters to make one of the best harbours for shipping that isin Great Britain—I mean Orwell Haven or Harwich, of which Ihave spoken largely already.

As we came on this side we saw at a distance Braintree andBocking, two towns, large, rich, and populous, and made sooriginally by the bay trade, of which I have spoken at large atColchester, and which flourishes still among them.

The manor of Braintree I found descended by purchase to thename of Olmeus, the son of a London merchant of the same name,making good what I had observed before, of the great number ofsuch who have purchased estates in this county.

Near this town is Felsted, a small place, but noted for a freeschool of an ancient foundation, for many years under themastership of the late Rev. Mr. Lydiat, and brought by him to themeridian of its reputation.  It is now supplied, and thatvery worthily, by the Rev. Mr. Hutchins.

Near to this is the Priory of Lees, a delicious seat of thelate Dukes of Manchester, but sold by the present Duke to theDuchess Dowager of Bucks, his Grace the Duke of Manchesterremoving to his yet finer seat of Kimbolton in Northamptonshire,the ancient mansion of the family.  From hence keeping theLondon Road I came to Chelmsford, mentioned before, andIngerstone, five miles west, which I mention again, because inthe parish church of this town are to be seen the ancientmonuments of the noble family of Petre, whose seat and largeestate lie in the neighbourhood, and whose whole family, by aconstant series of beneficent actions to the poor, and bountyupon all charitable occasions, have gained an affectionate esteemthrough all that part of the country such as no prejudice ofreligion could wear out, or perhaps ever may; and I must confess,I think, need not, for good and great actions command ourrespect, let the opinions of the persons be otherwise what theywill.

From hence we crossed the country to the great forest, calledEpping Forest, reaching almost to London.  The country onthat side of Essex is called the Roodings, I suppose, becausethere are no less than ten towns almost together, called by thename of Roding, and is famous for good land, good malt, and dirtyroads; the latter indeed in the winter are scarce passable forhorse or man.  In the midst of this we see Chipping Onger,Hatfield Broad Oak, Epping, and many forest towns, famed as Ihave said for husbandry and good malt, but of no othernote.  On the south side of the county is Waltham Abbey; theruins of the abbey remain, and though antiquity is not my properbusiness, I could not but observe that King Harold, slain in thegreat battle in Sussex against William the Conqueror, lies buriedhere; his body being begged by his mother, the Conqueror allowedit to be carried hither; but no monument was, as I can find,built for him, only a flat gravestone, on which was engravenHarold Infelix.

From hence I came over the forest again—that is to say,over the lower or western part of it, where it is spangled withfine villages, and these villages filled with fine seats, most ofthem built by the citizens of London, as I observed before, butthe lustre of them seems to be entirely swallowed up in themagnificent palace of the Lord Castlemain, whose father, SirJosiah Child, as it were, prepared it in his life for the designof his son, though altogether unforeseen, by adding to theadvantage of its situation innumerable rows of trees, planted incurious order for avenues and vistas to the house, all leading upto the place where the old house stood, as to a centre.

In the place adjoining, his lordship, while he was yet SirRichard Child only, and some years before he began the foundationof his new house, laid out the most delicious, as well as mostspacious, pieces of ground for gardens that is to be seen in allthis part of England.  The greenhouse is an excellentbuilding, fit to entertain a prince; it is furnished with stovesand artificial places for heat from an apartment in which is abagnio and other conveniences, which render it both useful andpleasant.  And these gardens have been so the justadmiration of the world, that it has been the general diversionof the citizens to go out to see them, till the crowds grew toogreat, and his lordship was obliged to restrain his servants fromshowing them, except on one or two days in a week only.

The house is built since these gardens have beenfinished.  The building is all of Portland stone in thefront, which makes it look extremely glorious and magnificent ata distance, it being the particular property of that stone(except in the streets of London, where it is tainted and tingedwith the smoke of the city) to grow whiter and whiter the longerit stands in the open air.

As the front of the house opens to a long row of trees,reaching to the great road at Leightonstone, so the back face, orfront (if that be proper), respects the gardens, and, with aneasy descent, lands you upon the terrace, from whence is a mostbeautiful prospect to the river, which is all formed into canalsand openings to answer the views from above and beyond the river;the walks and wildernesses go on to such a distance, and in sucha manner up the hill, as they before went down, that the sight islost in the woods adjoining, and it looks all like one plantedgarden as far as the eye can see.

I shall cover as much as possible the melancholy part of astory which touches too sensibly many, if not most, of the greatand flourishing families in England.  Pity and matter ofgrief is it to think that families, by estate able to appear insuch a glorious posture as this, should ever be vulnerable by somean a disaster as that of stock-jobbing.  But the generalinfatuation of the day is a plea for it, so that men are not nowblamed on that account.  South Sea was a general possession,and if my Lord Castlemain was wounded by that arrow shot in thedark it was a misfortune.  But it is so much a happinessthat it was not a mortal wound, as it was to some men who onceseemed as much out of the reach of it.  And that blow, be itwhat it will, is not remembered for joy of the escape, for we seethis noble family, by prudence and management, rise out of allthat cloud, if it may be allowed such a name, and shining in thesame full lustre as before.

This cannot be said of some other families in this county,whose fine parks and new-built palaces are fallen underforfeitures and alienations by the misfortunes of the times andby the ruin of their masters’ fortunes in that South Seadeluge.

But I desire to throw a veil over these things as they come inmy way; it is enough that we write upon them, as was written uponKing Harold’s tomb at Waltham Abbey, Infelix, andlet all the rest sleep among things that are the fittest to beforgotten.

From my Lord Castlemain’s, house and the rest of thefine dwellings on that side of the forest, for there are severalvery good houses at Wanstead, only that they seem all swallowedup in the lustre of his lordship’s palace, I say, fromthence, I went south, towards the great road over that part ofthe forest called the Flats, where we see a very beautiful butretired and rural seat of Mr. Lethulier’s, eldest son ofthe late Sir John Lethulier, of Lusum, in Kent, of whose family Ishall speak when I come on that side.

By this turn I came necessarily on to Stratford, where I setout.  And thus having finished my first circuit, I concludemy first letter, and am,

Sir, your most humble
and obedient servant.

APPENDIX.

Whoever travels, as I do, overEngland, and writes the account of his observations, will, as Inoted before, always leave something, altering or undertaking bysuch a growing improving nation as this, or something to discoverin a nation where so much is hid, sufficient to employ the pensof those that come after him, or to add by way of appendix towhat he has already observed.

This is my case with respect to the particulars which follow:(1) Since these sheets were in the press, a noble palace of Mr.Walpole’s, at present First Commissioner of the Treasury,Privy-counsellor, etc., to King George, is, as it were, risen outof the ruins of the ancient seat of the family of Walpole, atHoughton, about eight miles distant from Lynn, and on the northcoast of Norfolk, near the sea.

As the house is not yet finished, and when I passed by it wasbut newly designed, it cannot be expected that I should be ableto give a particular description of what it will be.  I cando little more than mention that it appears already to beexceedingly magnificent, and suitable to the genius of the greatfounder.

But a friend of mine, who lives in that county, has sent methe following lines, which, as he says, are to be placed upon thebuilding, whether on the frieze of the cornice, or over theportico, or on what part of the building, of that I am not as yetcertain.  The inscription is as follows, viz.:—

“H. M. P.

“Fundamen ut essem Domûs
In Agro Natali Extruendæ,
Robertus ille Walpole
Quem nulla nesciet Posteritas:

Faxit Dues.

“Postquam Maturus Annis Dominus.
Diu Lætatus fuerit absolutâ
Incolumem tueantur Incolames.
Ad Summam omnium Diem
Et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis.

Hic me Posuit.”

A second thing proper to be added here, by way of appendix,relates to what I have mentioned of the Port of London, beingbounded by the Naze on the Essex shore, and the North Foreland onthe Kentish shore, which some people, guided by the present usageof the Custom House, may pretend is not so, to answer suchobjectors.  The true state of that case stands thus:

“(1)  The clause taken from the Act of Parliamentestablishing the extent of the Port of London, and published insome of the books of rates, is this:

“‘To prevent all future differences and disputestouching the extent and limits of the Port of London, the saidport is declared to extend, and be accounted from the promontoryor point called the North Foreland in the Isle of Thanet, andfrom thence northward in a right line to the point called theNaze, beyond the Gunfleet upon the coast of Essex, and socontinued westward throughout the river Thames, and the severalchannels, streams, and rivers falling into it, to London Bridge,saving the usual and known rights, liberties, and privileges ofthe ports of Sandwich and Ipswich, and either of them, and theknown members thereof, and of the customers, comptrollers,searchers, and their deputies, of and within the said ports ofSandwich and Ipswich and the several creeks, harbours, and havensto them, or either of them, respectively belonging, within thecounties of Kent and Essex.’

“II.  Notwithstanding what is above written, thePort of London, as in use since the said order, is understood toreach no farther than Gravesend in Kent and Tilbury Point inEssex, and the ports of Rochester, Milton, and Faversham belongto the port of Sandwich.

“In like manner the ports of Harwich, Colchester,Wivenhoe, Malden, Leigh, etc., are said to be members of the portof Ipswich.”

This observation may suffice for what is needful to be saidupon the same subject when I may come to speak of the port ofSandwich and its members and their privileges with respect toRochester, Milton, Faversham, etc., in my circuit through thecounty of Kent.

Related articles