Title: From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"
Author: Defoe, Daniel, 1661-1731
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"" ***


Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org



FROM
LONDON TO LAND'S END.


BY
DANIEL DEFOE.

AND

_Two Letters from the_ "_Journey through England by a Gentleman_."

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.
1888.



INTRODUCTION.


At the end of this book there are a couple of letters from a volume of
the "Travels in England" which were not by Defoe, although resembling
Defoe's work so much in form and title, and so near to it in date of
publication, that a volume of one book is often found taking the place of
a volume of the other.  A purchaser of Defoe's "Travels in England" has
therefore to take care that he is not buying one of the mixed sets.  Each
of the two works describes England at the end of the first quarter of the
eighteenth century.  Our added descriptions of Bath, and of the journey
by Chester to Holyhead, were published in 1722; Defoe's "Journey from
London to the Land's End" was published in 1724, and both writers help us
to compare the past with the present by their accounts of England as it
was in the days of George the First, more than a hundred and sixty years
ago.  The days certainly are gone when, after a good haul of pilchards,
seventeen can be bought for a halfpenny, and two gentlemen and their
servant can have them broiled at a tavern and dine on them for three
farthings, dressing and all.  In another of his journeys Defoe gives a
seaside tavern bill, in which the charges were ridiculously small for
everything except for bread.  It was war time, and the bread was the most
costly item in the bill.

In the earlier part of this account of the "Journey from London to the
Land's End," there is interest in the fresh memories of the rebuilding
and planting at Hampton Court by William III. and Queen Mary.  The
passing away, and in opinion of that day the surpassing, of Wolsey's
palace there were none then to regret.

A more characteristic feature in this letter will be found in the details
of a project which Defoe says he had himself advocated before the Lord-
Treasurer Godolphin, for the settlement of poor refugees from the
Palatinate upon land in the New Forest.  Our friendly relations with the
Palatinate had begun with the marriage of James the First's eldest
daughter to the Elector Palatine, who brought on himself much trouble by
accepting the crown of Bohemia from the subjects of the Emperor Ferdinand
the Second.  As a Protestant Prince allied by marriage to England, he
drew from England sympathies and ineffectual assistance.  Many years
afterwards, during the war with France in Queen Anne's time, the allies
were unprosperous in 1707, and Marshal Villars was victorious upon the
Rhine.  The pressure of public feeling on behalf of refugees from the
Palatinate did not last long enough for any action to be taken.  But if
it had seemed well to the Government to accept the project advocated by
Defoe, we should have had a clearance of what is now the most beautiful
part of the New Forest, near Lyndhurst; and in place of the little area
that still preserves all the best features of forest land, we should have
had a town of Englishmen descended from the latest of the German
settlements upon our soil.  Upon the political economy of Defoe's
project, and the accuracy of his calculations, and the more or less
resemblance of his scheme to the system of free grants of land in
unsettled regions beyond the sea, each reader will speculate in his own
way.

There are interesting notes on the extent of the sheep farming upon the
Downs crossed in this journey.  There is high praise of the ladies of
Dorsetshire.  There are some pleasant notes upon dialect, including the
story, often quoted, of the schoolboy whom Defoe saw and heard reading
his Bible in class, and while following every word and line with his eye,
translating it as he went into his own way of speech.  Thus he turned the
third verse of the fifth chapter of Solomon's Song, "I have put off my
coat; how shall I put it on?  I have washed my feet; how shall I defile
them?" into "Chav a doffed my cooat; how shall I don't?  Chav a washed my
veet; how shall I moil 'em?"  This is a good example of intelligent
reading; for the boy took in the sense of the printed lines, and then
made it his own by giving homely utterance to what he understood.

Defoe tells in this letter several tales of the shorefolk about the Great
Storm of November, 1703, recollection of which Addison used effectively
in the following year in his poem on the Battle of Blenheim.  There was
the sweeping away of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, with the builder,
confident in its strength, who had desired to be in it some night when
the wind blew with unusual fury.  There was the story also of the man and
two boys, in a ship laden with tin, blown out of Helford Haven, and of
their hairbreadth escape by counsel of one of the boys who ran the ship
through rocks into a narrow creek that he knew in the Isle of Wight.  The
form of the coast has been changed so much since 1703 by the beat of many
storms, that it may be now impossible to know that little cove as the boy
knew it.  It must have been at the back of the island.  Were the storm
waves tossing then in Steephill Cove or Luccombe Chine?  Does there
survive anywhere a tradition of that perilous landing?  Probably not.
Wreck follows upon wreck, and memory of many tales of death and peril on
the rock-bound coast lie between us and the boy who took the helm when he
spied the well-known creek as the great storm was sweeping the ship on to
destruction.  From the next year after that famous storm, Defoe gives a
memory of disaster seen by himself at Plymouth in the wreck of a little
fleet from Barbadoes.  In another part of this letter he tells what he
had seen of a fight at sea between three French men-of-war and two
English with a convoy of two or three trading vessels.

There will be found also in this letter a good story of a Cornish dog
taken from Carew's "Survey of Cornwall," which may pair with that of the
London dog who lately took a wounded fellow dog to hospital.

The writer of this letter speaks of the civil war times as a friend of
monarchy, but when he tells of the landing of William III. at Torbay, he
suggests that the people had good reason for rejoicing, and throughout
the journey he takes note of a great inequality he finds in distribution
of the right of returning members to Parliament.  It is evident that he
could propound a project for a Reform Bill, though he is careful so to
describe England as to avoid giving offence to Englishmen of any party.
The possibility of some change for the better here and there presents
itself; Defoe glances and passes on.  His theme is England and the
English; he shows us, clearly and very simply, what he has seen of the
social life and manners of the people, of the features of the land
itself, and their relation to its industries; traces of the past, and
prospects of the future; shepherds, fishermen, merchants; catching of
salmon peel in mill-weirs, and catching of husbands at provincial
assemblies; with whatever else he found worth friendly observation.

H. M.



FROM LONDON TO LAND'S END


Sir,

I find so much left to speak of, and so many things to say in every part
of England, that my journey cannot be barren of intelligence which way
soever I turn; no, though I were to oblige myself to say nothing of
anything that had been spoken of before.

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

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

As I came down from Kingston, in my last circuit, by the south bank of
the Thames, on the Surrey side of the river; so I go up to Hampton Court
now on the north bank, and on the Middlesex side, which I mention,
because, as the sides of the country bordering on the river lie parallel,
so the beauty of the country, the pleasant situations, the glory of
innumerable fine buildings (noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, and
citizens' retreats), are so equal a match to what I had described on the
other side that one knows not which to give the preference to: but as I
must speak of them again, when I come to write of the county of
Middlesex, which I have now purposely omitted; so I pass them over here,
except the palace of Hampton only, which I mentioned in "Middlesex," for
the reasons above.

Hampton Court lies on the north bank of the River Thames, about two small
miles from Kingston, and on the road from Staines to Kingston Bridge; so
that the road straightening the parks a little, they were obliged to part
the parks, and leave the Paddock and the great park part on the other
side the road--a testimony of that just regard that the kings of England
always had, and still have, to the common good, and to the service of the
country, that they would not interrupt the course of the road, or cause
the poor people to go out of the way of their business to or from the
markets and fairs, for any pleasure of their own whatsoever.

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

I shall sing you no songs here of the river in the first person of a
water-nymph, a goddess, and I know not what, according to the humour of
the ancient poets; I shall talk nothing of the marriage of old Isis, the
male river, with the beautiful Thame, the female river (a whimsey as
simple as the subject was empty); but I shall speak of the river as
occasion presents, as it really is made glorious by the splendour of its
shores, gilded with noble palaces, strong fortifications, large
hospitals, and public buildings; with the greatest bridge, and the
greatest city in the world, made famous by the opulence of its merchants,
the increase and extensiveness of its commerce; by its invincible navies,
and by the innumerable fleets of ships sailing upon it to and from all
parts of the world.

As I meet with the river upwards in my travels through the inland country
I shall speak of it, as it is the channel for conveying an infinite
quantity of provisions from remote counties to London, and enriching all
the counties again that lie near it by the return of wealth and trade
from the city; and in describing these things I expect both to inform and
divert my readers, and speak in a more masculine manner, more to the
dignity of the subject, and also more to their satisfaction, than I could
do any other way.

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

The prince and princess, indeed, I remember came once down by water upon
the occasion of her Royal Highness's being great with child, and near her
time--so near that she was delivered within two or three days after.  But
this passage being in the royal barges, with strength of oars, and the
day exceeding fine, the passage, I say, was made very pleasant, and still
the more so for being short.  Again, this passage is all the way with the
stream, whereas in the common passage upwards great part of the way is
against the stream, which is slow and heavy.

But be the going and coming how it will by water, it is an exceeding
pleasant passage by land, whether we go by the Surrey side or the
Middlesex side of the water, of which I shall say more in its place.

The situation of Hampton Court being thus mentioned, and its founder, it
is to be mentioned next that it fell to the Crown in the forfeiture of
his Eminence the Cardinal, when the king seized his effects and estate,
by which this and Whitehall (another house of his own building also) came
to King Henry VIII.  Two palaces fit for the kings of England, erected by
one cardinal, are standing monuments of the excessive pride as well as
the immense wealth of that prelate, who knew no bounds of his insolence
and ambition till he was overthrown at once by the displeasure of his
master.

Whoever knew Hampton Court before it was begun to be rebuilt, or altered,
by the late King William, must acknowledge it was a very complete palace
before, and fit for a king; and though it might not, according to the
modern method of building or of gardening, pass for a thing exquisitely
fine, yet it had this remaining to itself, and perhaps peculiar--namely,
that it showed a situation exceedingly capable of improvement, and of
being made one of the most delightful palaces in Europe.

This her Majesty Queen Mary was so sensible of, that, while the king had
ordered the pulling down the old apartments, and building it up in that
most beautiful form which we see them now appear in, her Majesty,
impatient of enjoying so agreeable a retreat, fixed upon a building
formerly made use of chiefly for landing from the river, and therefore
called the Water Galley, and here, as if she had been conscious that she
had but a few years to enjoy it, she ordered all the little neat curious
things to be done which suited her own conveniences, and made it the
pleasantest little thing within doors that could possibly be made, though
its situation being such as it could not be allowed to stand after the
great building was finished, we now see no remains of it.

The queen had here her gallery of beauties, being the pictures at full-
length of the principal ladies attending upon her Majesty, or who were
frequently in her retinue; and this was the more beautiful sight because
the originals were all in being, and often to be compared with their
pictures.  Her Majesty had here a fine apartment, with a set of lodgings
for her private retreat only, but most exquisitely furnished,
particularly a fine chintz bed, then a great curiosity; another of her
own work while in Holland, very magnificent, and several others; and here
was also her Majesty's fine collection of Delft ware, which indeed was
very large and fine; and here was also a vast stock of fine china ware,
the like whereof was not then to be seen in England; the long gallery, as
above, was filled with this china, and every other place where it could
be placed with advantage.

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

Here the fine parcel of limes which form the semicircle on the south
front of the house by the iron gates, looking into the park, were by the
dexterous hand of the head gardener removed, after some of them had been
almost thirty years planted in other places, though not far off.  I know
the King of France in the decoration of the gardens of Versailles had
oaks removed, which by their dimensions must have been above an hundred
years old, and yet were taken up with so much art, and by the strength of
such engines, by which such a monstrous quantity of earth was raised with
them, that the trees could not feel their remove--that is to say, their
growth was not at all hindered.  This, I confess, makes the wonder much
the less in those trees at Hampton Court gardens; but the performance was
not the less difficult or nice, however, in these, and they thrive
perfectly well.

While the gardens were thus laid out, the king also directed the laying
the pipes for the fountains and _jet-d'eaux_, and particularly the
dimensions of them, and what quantity of water they should cast up, and
increased the number of them after the first design.

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

The _parterre_ on that side descends from the terrace-walk by steps, and
on the left a terrace goes down to the water-side, from which the garden
on the eastward front is overlooked, and gives a most pleasant prospect.

The fine scrolls and _bordure_ of these gardens were at first edged with
box, but on the queen's disliking the smell those edgings were taken up,
but have since been planted again--at least, in many places--nothing
making so fair and regular an edging as box, or is so soon brought to its
perfection.

On the north side of the house, where the gardens seemed to want
screening from the weather or the view of the chapel, and some part of
the old building required to be covered from the eye, the vacant ground,
which was large, is very happily cast into a wilderness, with a labyrinth
and _espaliers_ so high that they effectually take off all that part of
the old building which would have been offensive to the sight.  This
labyrinth and wilderness is not only well designed, and completely
finished, but is perfectly well kept, and the _espaliers_ filled exactly
at bottom, to the very ground, and are led up to proportioned heights on
the top, so that nothing of that kind can be more beautiful.

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

I hinted in my last that King William brought into England the love of
fine paintings as well as that of fine gardens; and you have an example
of it in the cartoons, as they are called, being five pieces of such
paintings as, if you will believe men of nice judgment and great
travelling, are not to be matched in Europe.  The stories are known, but
especially two of them--viz., that of St. Paul preaching on Mars Hill to
the self-wise Athenians, and that of St. Peter passing sentence of death
on Ananias--I say, these two strike the mind with the utmost surprise,
the passions are so drawn to the life; astonishment, terror, and death in
the face of Ananias, zeal and a sacred fire in the eyes of the blessed
Apostle, fright and surprise upon the countenances of the beholders in
the piece of Ananias; all these describe themselves so naturally that you
cannot but seem to discover something of the like passions, even in
seeing them.

In the other there is the boldness and courage with which St. Paul
undertook to talk to a set of men who, he knew, despised all the world,
as thinking themselves able to teach them anything.  In the audience
there is anticipating pride and conceit in some, a smile or fleer of
contempt in others, but a kind of sensible conviction, though crushed in
its beginning, on the faces of the rest; and all together appear
confounded, but have little to say, and know nothing at all of it; they
gravely put him off to hear him another time; all these are seen here in
the very dress of the face--that is, the very countenances which they
hold while they listen to the new doctrine which the Apostle preached to
a people at that time ignorant of it.

The other of the cartoons are exceeding fine but I mention these as the
particular two which are most lively, which strike the fancy the soonest
at first view.  It is reported, but with what truth I know not, that the
late French king offered an hundred thousand _louis d'ors_ for these
pictures; but this, I say, is but a report.  The king brought a great
many other fine pieces to England, and with them the love of fine
paintings so universally spread itself among the nobility and persons of
figure all over the kingdom that it is incredible what collections have
been made by English gentlemen since that time, and how all Europe has
been rummaged, as we may say, for pictures to bring over hither, where
for twenty years they yielded the purchasers, such as collected them for
sale, immense profit.  But the rates are abated since that, and we begin
to be glutted with the copies and frauds of the Dutch and Flemish
painters who have imposed grossly upon us.  But to return to the palace
of Hampton Court.  Queen Mary lived not to see it completely finished,
and her death, with the other difficulties of that reign, put a stop to
the works for some time till the king, reviving his good liking of the
place, set them to work again, and it was finished as we see it.  But I
have been assured that had the peace continued, and the king lived to
enjoy the continuance of it, his Majesty had resolved to have pulled down
all the remains of the old building (such as the chapel and the large
court within the first gate), and to have built up the whole palace after
the manner of those two fronts already done.  In these would have been an
entire set of rooms of state for the receiving and, if need had been,
lodging and entertaining any foreign prince with his retinue; also
offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury, and of
Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business as it might
be necessary to have done there upon the king's longer residence there
than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great officers of the
Household; so that had the house had two great squares added, as was
designed, there would have been no room to spare, or that would not have
been very well filled.  But the king's death put an end to all these
things.

Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemed abandoned of its
patron.  They have gotten a kind of proverbial saying relating to Hampton
Court, viz., that it has been generally chosen by every other prince
since it became a house of note.  King Charles was the first that
delighted in it since Queen Elizabeth's time.  As for the reigns before,
it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was not made a royal house
till King Charles I., who was not only a prince that delighted in country
retirements, but knew how to make choice of them by the beauty of their
situation, the goodness of the air, &c.  He took great delight here, and,
had he lived to enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thing
than it was.  But we all know what took him off from that felicity, and
all others; and this house was at last made one of his prisons by his
rebellious subjects.

His son, King Charles II., may well be said to have an aversion to the
place, for the reason just mentioned--namely, the treatment his royal
father met with there--and particularly that the rebel and murderer of
his father, Cromwell, afterwards possessed this palace, and revelled here
in the blood of the royal party, as he had done in that of his sovereign.
King Charles II. therefore chose Windsor, and bestowed a vast sum in
beautifying the castle there, and which brought it to the perfection we
see it in at this day--some few alterations excepted, done in the time of
King William.

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

The late queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kind regards to the
prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where her care of his health
confined her, and in this case kept for the most part at Kensington,
where he died; but her Majesty always discovered her delight to be at
Windsor, where she chose the little house, as it was called, opposite to
the Castle, and took the air in her chaise in the parks and forest as she
saw occasion.

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

From Hampton Court I directed my course for a journey into the south-west
part of England; and to take up my beginning where I concluded my last, I
crossed to Chertsey on the Thames, a town I mentioned before; from
whence, crossing the Black Desert, as I called it, of Bagshot Heath, I
directed my course for Hampshire or Hantshire, and particularly for
Basingstoke--that is to say, that a little before, I passed into the
great Western Road upon the heath, somewhat west of Bagshot, at a village
called Blackwater, and entered Hampshire, near Hartleroe.

Before we reach Basingstoke, we get rid of that unpleasant country which
I so often call a desert, and enter into a pleasant fertile country,
enclosed and cultivated like the rest of England; and passing a village
or two we enter Basingstoke, in the midst of woods and pastures, rich and
fertile, and the country accordingly spread with the houses of the
nobility and gentry, as in other places.  On the right hand, a little
before we come to the town, we pass at a small distance the famous
fortress, so it was then, of Basing, being a house belonging then to the
Marquis of Winchester, the great ancestor of the present family of the
Dukes of Bolton.

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

Basingstoke is a large populous market-town, has a good market for corn,
and lately within a very few years is fallen into a manufacture, viz., of
making druggets and shalloons, and such slight goods, which, however,
employs a good number of the poor people, and enables them to get their
bread, which knew not how to get it before.

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

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

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

Here is a very large pond, or lake of water, kept up to a head by a
strong _batter d'eau_, or dam, which the people tell us was made by the
Romans; and that it is to this day part of the great Roman highway which
leads from Winchester to Alton, and, as it is supposed, went on to
London, though we nowhere see any remains of it, except between
Winchester and Alton, and chiefly between this town and Alton.

Near this town, a little north-west, the Duke of Bolton has another seat,
which, though not large, is a very handsome beautiful palace, and the
gardens not only very exact, but very finely situate, the prospect and
vistas noble and great, and the whole very well kept.

From hence, at the end of seven miles over the Downs, we come to the very
ancient city of Winchester; not only the great church (which is so famous
all over Europe, and has been so much talked of), but even the whole city
has at a distance the face of venerable, and looks ancient afar off; and
yet here are many modern buildings too, and some very handsome; as the
college schools, with the bishop's palace, built by Bishop Morley since
the late wars--the old palace of the bishop having been ruined by that
known church incendiary Sir William Waller and his crew of plunderers,
who, if my information is not wrong, as I believe it is not, destroyed
more monuments of the dead, and defaced more churches, than all the
Roundheads in England beside.

This church, and the schools also are accurately described by several
writers, especially by the "Monasticon," where their antiquity and
original is fully set forth.  The outside of the church is as plain and
coarse as if the founders had abhorred ornaments, or that William of
Wickham had been a Quaker, or at least a Quietist.  There is neither
statue, nor a niche for a statue, to be seen on all the outside; no
carved work, no spires, towers, pinnacles, balustrades, or anything; but
mere walls, buttresses, windows, and coigns necessary to the support and
order of the building.  It has no steeple, but a short tower covered
flat, as if the top of it had fallen down, and it had been covered in
haste to keep the rain out till they had time to build it up again.

But the inside of the church has many very good things in it, and worth
observation; it was for some ages the burying-place of the English Saxon
kings, whose _reliques_, at the repair of the church, were collected by
Bishop Fox, and being put together into large wooden chests lined with
lead were again interred at the foot of the great wall in the choir,
three on one side, and three on the other, with an account whose bones
are in each chest.  Whether the division of the _reliques_ might be
depended upon, has been doubted, but is not thought material, so that we
do but believe they are all there.

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

The choir is said to be the longest in England; and as the number of
prebendaries, canons, &c., are many, it required such a length.  The
ornaments of the choir are the effects of the bounty of several bishops.
The fine altar (the noblest in England by much) was done by Bishop
Morley; the roof and the coat-of-arms of the Saxon and Norman kings were
done by Bishop Fox; and the fine throne for the bishop in the choir was
given by Bishop Mew in his lifetime; and it was well it was for if he had
ordered it by will, there is reason to believe it had never been
done--that reverend prelate, notwithstanding he enjoyed so rich a
bishopric, scarce leaving money enough behind him to pay for his coffin.

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

The monument of Sir John Cloberry is extraordinary, but more because it
puts strangers upon inquiring into his story than for anything wonderful
in the figure, it being cut in a modern dress (the habit gentlemen wore
in those times, which, being now so much out of fashion, appears mean
enough).  But this gentleman's story is particular, being the person
solely entrusted with the secret of the restoration of King Charles II.,
as the messenger that passed between General Monk on one hand, and Mr.
Montague and others entrusted by King Charles II. on the other hand;
which he managed so faithfully as to effect that memorable event, to
which England owes the felicity of all her happy days since that time; by
which faithful service Sir John Cloberry, then a private musketeer only,
raised himself to the honour of a knight, with the reward of a good
estate from the bounty of the king.

Everybody that goes into this church, and reads what is to be read there,
will be told that the body of the church was built by the famous William
of Wickham; whose monument, intimating his fame, lies in the middle of
that part which was built at his expense.

He was a courtier before a bishop; and, though he had no great share of
learning, he was a great promoter of it, and a lover of learned men.  His
natural genius was much beyond his acquired parts, and his skill in
politics beyond his ecclesiastic knowledge.  He is said to have put his
master, King Edward III., to whom he was Secretary of State, upon the two
great projects which made his reign so glorious, viz.:--First, upon
setting up his claim to the crown of France, and pushing that claim by
force of arms, which brought on the war with France, in which that prince
was three times victorious in battle. (2)  Upon setting up, or
instituting the Order of the Garter; in which he (being before that made
Bishop of Winchester) obtained the honour for the Bishops of Winchester
of being always prelates of the Order, as an appendix to the bishopric;
and he himself was the first prelate of the Order, and the ensigns of
that honour are joined with his episcopal ornaments in the robing of his
effigy on the monument above.

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

The scholars have exhibitions at a certain time of continuance here, if
they please to study in the new college at Oxford, built by the same
noble benefactor, of which I shall speak in its order.

The clergy here live at large, and very handsomely, in the Close
belonging to the cathedral; where, besides the bishop's palace mentioned
above, are very good houses, and very handsomely built, for the
prebendaries, canons, and other dignitaries of this church.  The Deanery
is a very pleasant dwelling, the gardens very large, and the river
running through them; but the floods in winter sometimes incommode the
gardens very much.

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

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

   "Surrepuit natum Febris, matrem abstulit Hydrops,
   Igne Prior Fatis, Altera cepit Aqua."

As the city itself stands in a vale on the bank, and at the conjunction
of two small rivers, so the country rising every way, but just as the
course of the water keeps the valley open, you must necessarily, as you
go out of the gates, go uphill every wry; but when once ascended, you
come to the most charming plains and most pleasant country of that kind
in England; which continues with very small intersections of rivers and
valleys for above fifty miles, as shall appear in the sequel of this
journey.

At the west gate of this city was anciently a castle, known to be so by
the ruins more than by any extraordinary notice taken of it in history.
What they say of it, that the Saxon kings kept their court here, is
doubtful, and must be meant of the West Saxons only.  And as to the tale
of King Arthur's Round Table, which they pretend was kept here for him
and his two dozen of knights (which table hangs up still, as a piece of
antiquity to the tune of twelve hundred years, and has, as they pretend,
the names of the said knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man
can read), all this story I see so little ground to give the least credit
to that I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a
fib.

Where this castle stood, or whatever else it was (for some say there was
no castle there), the late King Charles II. marked out a very noble
design, which, had he lived, would certainly have made that part of the
country the Newmarket of the ages to come; for the country hereabout far
excels that of Newmarket Heath for all kinds of sport and diversion fit
for a prince, nobody can dispute.  And as the design included a noble
palace (sufficient, like Windsor, for a summer residence of the whole
court), it would certainly have diverted the king from his cursory
journeys to Newmarket.

The plan of this house has received several alterations, and as it is
never like to be finished, it is scarce worth recording the variety.  The
building is begun, and the front next the city carried up to the roof and
covered, but the remainder is not begun.  There was a street of houses
designed from the gate of the palace down to the town, but it was never
begun to be built; the park marked out was exceeding large, near ten
miles in circumference, and ended west upon the open Downs, in view of
the town of Stockbridge.

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

I cannot omit that there are several public edifices in this city and in
the neighbourhood, as the hospitals and the building adjoining near the
east gate; and towards the north a piece of an old monastery
undemolished, and which is still preserved to the religion, being the
residence of some private Roman Catholic gentlemen, where they have an
oratory, and, as they say, live still according to the rules of St.
Benedict.  This building is called Hide House; and as they live very
usefully, and to the highest degree obliging among their neighbours, they
meet with no obstruction or disturbance from anybody.

Winchester is a place of no trade other than is naturally occasioned by
the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages one with another.
Here is no manufacture, no navigation; there was indeed an attempt to
make the river navigable from Southampton, and it was once made
practicable, but it never answered the expense so as to give
encouragement to the undertakers.

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

As there is such good company, so they are gotten into that new-fashioned
way of conversing by assemblies.  I shall do no more than mention them
here; they are pleasant and agreeable to the young peoples, and sometimes
fatal to them, of which, in its place, Winchester has its share of the
mirth.  May it escape the ill-consequences!

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

How the revenues of this hospital, which should maintain the master and
thirty private gentlemen (whom they call Fellows, but ought to call
Brothers), is now reduced to maintain only fourteen, while the master
lives in a figure equal to the best gentleman in the country, would be
well worth the inquiry of a proper visitor, if such can be named.  It is
a thing worthy of complaint when public charities, designed for the
relief of the poor, are embezzled and depredated by the rich, and turned
to the support of luxury and pride.

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

But it is more remarkable still how a great part of these Downs comes, by
a new method of husbandry, to be not only made arable (which they never
were in former days), but to bear excellent wheat, and great crops, too,
though otherwise poor barren land, and never known to our ancestors to be
capable of any such thing--nay, they would perhaps have laughed at any
one that would have gone about to plough up the wild downs and hills
where the sheep were wont to go.  But experience has made the present age
wiser and more skilful in husbandry; for by only folding the sheep upon
the ploughed lands--those lands which otherwise are barren, and where the
plough goes within three or four inches of the solid rock of chalk, are
made fruitful and bear very good wheat, as well as rye and barley.  I
shall say more of this when I come to speak of the same practice farther
in the country.

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

As we passed this plain country, we saw a great many old camps, as well
Roman as British, and several remains of the ancient inhabitants of this
kingdom, and of their wars, battles, entrenchments, encampments,
buildings, and other fortifications, which are indeed very agreeable to a
traveller that has read anything of the history of the country.  Old
Sarum is as remarkable as any of these, where there is a double
entrenchment, with a deep graff or ditch to either of them; the area
about one hundred yards in diameter, taking in the whole crown of the
hill, and thereby rendering the ascent very difficult.  Near this there
is one farm-house, which is all the remains I could see of any town in or
near the place (for the encampment has no resemblance of a town), and yet
this is called the borough of Old Sarum, and sends two members to
Parliament.  Whom those members can justly say they represent would be
hard for them to answer.

Some will have it that the old city of _Sorbiodunum_ or Salisbury stood
here, and was afterwards (for I know not what reasons) removed to the low
marshy grounds among the rivers, where it now stands.  But as I see no
authority for it other than mere tradition, I believe my share of it, and
take it _ad referendum_.

Salisbury itself is indeed a large and pleasant city, though I do not
think it at all the pleasanter for that which they boast so much
of--namely, the water running through the middle of every street--or that
it adds anything to the beauty of the place, but just the contrary; it
keeps the streets always dirty, full of wet and filth and weeds, even in
the middle of summer.

The city is placed upon the confluence of two large rivers, the Avon and
the Willy, neither of them considerable rivers, but very large when
joined together, and yet larger when they receive a third river (viz.,
the Naddir), which joins them near Clarendon Park, about three miles
below the city; then, with a deep channel and a current less rapid, they
run down to Christchurch, which is their port.  And where they empty
themselves into the sea, from that town upwards towards Salisbury they
are made navigable to within two miles, and might be so quite into the
city, were it not for the strength of the stream.

As the city of Winchester is a city without trade--that is to say,
without any particular manufactures--so this city of Salisbury and all
the county of Wilts, of which it is the capital, are full of a great
variety of manufactures, and those some of the most considerable in
England--namely, the clothing trade and the trade of flannels, druggets,
and several other sorts of manufactures, of which in their order.

The city of Salisbury has two remarkable manufactures carried on in it,
and which employ the poor of great part of the country round--namely,
fine flannels, and long-cloths for the Turkey trade, called Salisbury
whites.  The people of Salisbury are gay and rich, and have a flourishing
trade; and there is a great deal of good manners and good company among
them--I mean, among the citizens, besides what is found among the
gentlemen; for there are many good families in Salisbury besides the
citizens.

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

The cathedral is famous for the height of its spire, which is without
exception the highest and the handsomest in England, being from the
ground 410 feet, and yet the walls so exceeding thin that at the upper
part of the spire, upon a view made by the late Sir Christopher Wren, the
wall was found to be less than five inches thick; upon which a
consultation was had whether the spire, or at least the upper part of it,
should be taken down, it being supposed to have received some damage by
the great storm in the year 1703; but it was resolved in the negative,
and Sir Christopher ordered it to be so strengthened with bands of iron
plates as has effectually secured it; and I have heard some of the best
architects say it is stronger now than when it was first built.

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

They tell us this church was forty years a-building, and cost an immense
sum of money; but it must be acknowledged that the inside of the work is
not answerable in the decoration of things to the workmanship without.
The painting in the choir is mean, and more like the ordinary method of
common drawing-room or tavern painting than that of a church; the carving
is good, but very little of it; and it is rather a fine church than
finely set off.

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

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

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

With her was buried at the same time her Grace's daughter the Marchioness
of Caermarthen (being married to the Marquis of Caermarthen, son and heir-
apparent to the Lord of Leeds), who died for grief at the loss of the
duchess her mother, and was buried with her; also her second son, the
Duke Percy Somerset, who died a few months before, and had been buried in
the Abbey church of Westminster, but was ordered to be removed and laid
here with the ancestors of his house.  And I hear his Grace designs to
have a yet more magnificent monument erected in this cathedral for them,
just by the other which is there already.

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

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

This Lord Stourton being guilty of the said murder, which also was
aggravated with very bad circumstances, could not obtain the usual grace
of the Crown (viz., to be beheaded), but Queen Mary positively ordered
that, like a common malefactor, he should die at the gallows.  After he
was hanged, his friends desiring to have him buried at Salisbury, the
bishop would not consent that he should be buried in the cathedral
unless, as a farther mark of infamy, his friends would submit to this
condition--viz., that the silken halter in which he was hanged should be
hanged up over his grave in the church as a monument of his crime; which
was accordingly done, and there it is to be seen to this day.

The putting this halter up here was not so wonderful to me as it was that
the posterity of that lord, who remained in good rank some time after,
should never prevail to have that mark of infamy taken off from the
memory of their ancestor.

There are several other monuments in this cathedral, as particularly of
two noblemen of ancient families in Scotland--one of the name of Hay, and
one of the name of Gordon; but they give us nothing of their history, so
that we must be content to say there they lie, and that is all.

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

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

But this being a large county, and full of memorable branches of
antiquity and modern curiosity, I cannot quit my observations so soon.
But being happily fixed, by the favour of a particular friend, at so
beautiful a spot of ground as this of Clarendon Park, I made several
little excursions from hence to view the northern parts of this county--a
county so fruitful of wonders that, though I do not make antiquity my
chief search, yet I must not pass it over entirely, where so much of it,
and so well worth observation, is to be found, which would look as if I
either understood not the value of the study, or expected my readers
should be satisfied with a total omission of it.

I have mentioned that this county is generally a vast continued body of
high chalky hills, whose tops spread themselves into fruitful and
pleasant downs and plains, upon which great flocks of sheep are fed, &c.
But the reader is desired to observe these hills and plains are most
beautifully intersected and cut through by the course of divers pleasant
and profitable rivers; in the course and near the banks of which there
always is a chain of fruitful meadows and rich pastures, and those
interspersed with innumerable pleasant towns, villages, and houses, and
among them many of considerable magnitude.  So that, while you view the
downs, and think the country wild and uninhabited, yet when you come to
descend into these vales you are surprised with the most pleasant and
fertile country in England.

There are no less than four of these rivers, which meet all together at
or near the city of Salisbury; especially the waters of three of them run
through the streets of the city--the Nadder and the Willy and the
Avon--and the course of these three lead us through the whole mountainous
part of the county.  The two first join their waters at Wilton, the
shiretown, though a place of no great notice now; and these are the
waters which run through the canal and the gardens of Wilton House, the
seat of that ornament of nobility and learning, the Earl of Pembroke.

One cannot be said to have seen anything that a man of curiosity would
think worth seeing in this county, and not have been at Wilton House; but
not the beautiful building, not the ancient trophy of a great family, not
the noble situation, not all the pleasures of the gardens, parks,
fountains, hare-warren, or of whatever is rare either in art or nature,
are equal to that yet more glorious sight of a noble princely palace
constantly filled with its noble and proper inhabitants.  The lord and
proprietor, who is indeed a true patriarchal monarch, reigns here with an
authority agreeable to all his subjects (family); and his reign is made
agreeable, by his first practising the most exquisite government of
himself, and then guiding all under him by the rules of honour and
virtue, being also himself perfectly master of all the needful arts of
family government--I mean, needful to make that government both easy and
pleasant to those who are under it, and who therefore willingly, and by
choice, conform to it.

Here an exalted genius is the instructor, a glorious example the guide,
and a gentle well-directed hand the governor and law-giver to the whole;
and the family, like a well-governed city, appears happy, flourishing,
and regular, groaning under no grievance, pleased with what they enjoy,
and enjoying everything which they ought to be pleased with.

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

The canal before the house lies parallel with the road, and receives into
it the whole river Willy, or at least is able to do so; it may, indeed,
be said that the river is made into a canal.  When we come into the
courtyards before the house there are several pieces of antiquity to
entertain the curious, as particularly a noble column of porphyry, with a
marble statue of Venus on the top of it.  In Italy, and especially at
Rome and Naples, we see a great variety of fine columns, and some of them
of excellent workmanship and antiquity; and at some of the courts of the
princes of Italy the like is seen, as especially at the court of
Florence; but in England I do not remember to have seen anything like
this, which, as they told me, is two-and-thirty feet high, and of
excellent workmanship, and that it came last from Candia, but formerly
from Alexandria.  What may belong to the history of it any further, I
suppose is not known--at least, they could tell me no more of it who
showed it me.

On the left of the court was formerly a large grotto and curious water-
works; and in a house, or shed, or part of the building, which opened
with two folding-doors, like a coach-house, a large equestrian statue of
one of the ancestors of the family in complete armour, as also another of
a Roman Emperor in brass.  But the last time I had the curiosity to see
this house, I missed that part; so that I supposed they were removed.

As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace, is a
nobleman of great personal merit many other ways, so he is a man of
learning and reading beyond most men of his lordship's high rank in this
nation, if not in the world; and as his reading has made him a master of
antiquity, and judge of such pieces of antiquity as he has had
opportunity to meet with in his own travels and otherwise in the world,
so it has given him a love of the study, and made him a collector of
valuable things, as well in painting as in sculpture, and other
excellences of art, as also of nature; insomuch that Wilton House is now
a mere museum or a chamber of rarities, and we meet with several things
there which are to be found nowhere else in the world.

As his lordship is a great collector of fine paintings, so I know no
nobleman's house in England so prepared, as if built on purpose, to
receive them; the largest and the finest pieces that can be imagined
extant in the world might have found a place here capable to receive
them.  I say, they "might have found," as if they could not now, which is
in part true; for at present the whole house is so completely filled that
I see no room for any new piece to crowd in without displacing some other
fine piece that hung there before.  As for the value of the piece that
might so offer to succeed the displaced, that the great judge of the
whole collection, the earl himself, must determine; and as his judgment
is perfectly good, the best picture would be sure to possess the place.
In a word, here is without doubt the best, if not the greatest,
collection of rarities and paintings that are to be seen together in any
one nobleman's or gentleman's house in England.  The piece of our Saviour
washing His disciples' feet, which they show you in one of the first
rooms you go into, must be spoken of by everybody that has any knowledge
of painting, and is an admirable piece indeed.

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

When you are entered the apartments, such variety seizes you every way
that you scarce know to which hand to turn yourself.  First on one side
you see several rooms filled with paintings as before, all so curious,
and the variety such, that it is with reluctance that you can turn from
them; while looking another way you are called off by a vast collection
of busts and pieces of the greatest antiquity of the kind, both Greek and
Romans; among these there is one of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in
basso-relievo.  I never saw anything like what appears here, except in
the chamber of rarities at Munich in Bavaria.

Passing these, you come into several large rooms, as if contrived for the
reception of the beautiful guests that take them up; one of these is near
seventy feet long, and the ceiling twenty-six feet high, with another
adjoining of the same height and breadth, but not so long.  Those
together might be called the Great Gallery of Wilton, and might vie for
paintings with the Gallery of Luxembourg, in the Faubourg of Paris.

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

This piece fills the farther end of the great room which I just now
mentioned; it contains the Earl of Montgomery, ancestor of the house of
Herbert (not then Earls of Pembroke) and his lady, sitting, and as big as
life; there are about them their own five sons and one daughter, and
their daughter-in-law, who was daughter of the Duke of Buckingham,
married to the elder Lord Herbert, their eldest son.  It is enough to say
of this piece, it is worth the labour of any lover of art to go five
hundred miles to see it; and I am informed several gentlemen of quality
have come from France almost on purpose.  It would be endless to describe
the whole set of the family pictures which take up this room, unless we
would enter into the roof-tree of the family, and set down a genealogical
line of the whole house.

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

Upon the whole, the genius of the noble collector may be seen in this
glorious collection, than which, take them together, there is not a finer
in any private hand in Europe, and in no hand at all in Britain, private
or public.

The gardens are on the south of the house, and extend themselves beyond
the river, a branch of which runs through one part of them, and still
south of the gardens in the great park, which, extending beyond the vale,
mounts the hill opening at the last to the great down, which is properly
called, by way of distinction, Salisbury Plain, and leads from the city
of Salisbury to Shaftesbury.  Here also his lordship has a hare-warren,
as it is called, though improperly.  It has, indeed, been a sanctuary for
the hares for many years; but the gentlemen complain that it mars their
game, for that as soon as they put up a hare for their sport, if it be
anywhere within two or three miles, away she runs for the warren, and
there is an end of their pursuit; on the other hand, it makes all the
countrymen turn poachers, and destroy the hares by what means they can.
But this is a smaller matter, and of no great import one way or other.

From this pleasant and agreeable day's work I returned to Clarendon, and
the next day took another short tour to the hills to see that celebrated
piece of antiquity, the wonderful Stonehenge, being six miles from
Salisbury, north, and upon the side of the River Avon, near the town of
Amesbury.  It is needless that I should enter here into any part of the
dispute about which our learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselves
that several books (and one of them in folio) have been published about
it; some alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple and altar, or place
of sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument or trophy of victory;
others a monument for the dead, as Mr. Aubrey, and the like.  Again, some
will have it be British, some Danish, some Saxon, some Roman, and some,
before them all, Phoenician.

I shall suppose it, as the majority of all writers do, to be a monument
for the dead, and the rather because men's bones have been frequently dug
up in the ground near them.  The common opinion that no man could ever
count them, that a baker carried a basket of bread and laid a loaf upon
every stone, and yet never could make out the same number twice, this I
take as a mere country fiction, and a ridiculous one too.  The reason why
they cannot easily be told is that many of them lie half or part buried
in the ground; and a piece here and a piece there only appearing above
the grass, it cannot be known easily which belong to one stone and which
to another, or which are separate stones, and which are joined
underground to one another; otherwise, as to those which appear, they are
easy to be told, and I have seen them told four times after one another,
beginning every time at a different place, and every time they amounted
to seventy-two in all; but then this was counting every piece of a stone
of bulk which appeared above the surface of the earth, and was not
evidently part of and adjoining to another, to be a distinct and separate
body or stone by itself.

The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in most
authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the last.  The
figure was at first circular, and there were at least four rows or
circles within one another.  The main stones were placed upright, and
they were joined on the top by cross-stones, laid from one to another,
and fastened with vast mortises and tenons.  Length of time has so
decayed them that not only most of the cross-stones which lay on the top
are fallen down, but many of the upright also, notwithstanding the weight
of them is so prodigious great.  How they came thither, or from whence
(no stones of that kind being now to be found in that part of England
near it) is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no
engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir them.

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

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

Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--namely, for
an erection or building so ancient that no history has handed down to us
the original.  As we find it, then, uncertain, we must leave it so.  It
is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and it is a great loss that the
true history of it is not known.  But since it is not, I think the making
so many conjectures at the reality, when they know lots can but guess at
it, and, above all, the insisting so long and warmly on their private
opinions, is but amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps
lies the deeper for their search into it.

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

Also the barrows, as we all agree to call them, are very many in number
in this county, and very obvious, having suffered very little decay.
These are large hillocks of earth cast up, as the ancients agree, by the
soldiers over the bodies of their dead comrades slain in battle; several
hundreds of these are to be seen, especially in the north part of this
county, about Marlborough and the downs, from thence to St. Ann's Hill,
and even every way the downs are full of them.

I have done with matters of antiquity for this county, unless you will
admit me to mention the famous Parliament in the reign of Henry II. held
at Clarendon, where I am now writing, and another intended to be held
there in Richard II.'s time, but prevented by the barons, being then up
in arms against the king.

Near this place, at Farlo, was the birthplace of the late Sir Stephen
Fox, and where the town, sharing in his good fortune, shows several marks
of his bounty, as particularly the building a new church from the
foundation, and getting an Act of Parliament passed for making it
parochial, it being but a chapel-of-ease before to an adjoining parish.
Also Sir Stephen built and endowed an almshouse here for six poor women,
with a master and a free school.  The master is to be a clergyman, and to
officiate in the church--that is to say, is to have the living, which,
including the school, is very sufficient.

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

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

This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record, laid open
and waste for a forest and for game by that violent tyrant William the
Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopled the country, pulled down
the houses, and, which was worse, the churches of several parishes or
towns, and of abundance of villages, turning the poor people out of their
habitations and possessions, and laying all open for his deer.  The same
histories likewise record that two of his own blood and posterity, and
particularly his immediate successor William Rufus, lost their lives in
this forest--one, viz., the said William Rufus, being shot with an arrow
directed at a deer which the king and his company were hunting, and the
arrow, glancing on a tree, changed his course, and struck the king full
on the breast and killed him.  This they relate as a just judgment of God
on the cruel devastation made here by the Conqueror.   Be it so or not,
as Heaven pleases; but that the king was so killed is certain, and they
show the tree on which the arrow glanced to this day.  In King Charles
II.'s time it was ordered to be surrounded with a pale; but as great part
of the paling is down with age, whether the tree be really so old or not
is to me a great question, the action being near seven hundred years ago.

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

Some persons being ordered by that noble lord above mentioned to consider
of measures how the said poor people should be provided for, and whether
they could be provided for or no without injury to the public, the answer
was grounded upon this maxim--that the number of inhabitants is the
wealth and strength of a kingdom, provided those inhabitants were such as
by honest industry applied themselves to live by their labour, to
whatsoever trades or employments they were brought up.  In the next
place, it was inquired what employments those poor people were brought up
to.  It was answered there were husbandmen and artificers of all sorts,
upon which the proposal was as follows.  New Forest, in Hampshire, was
singled out to be the place:--

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

Then it was proposed to since out twenty men and their families, who
should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or at least
capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and cultivating of land,
breeding and feeding cattle, and the like.  To each of these should be
parcelled out, in equal distributions, two hundred acres of this land, so
that the whole four thousand acres should be fully distributed to the
said twenty families, for which they should have no rent to pay, and be
liable to no taxes but such as provided for their own sick or poor,
repairing their own roads, and the like.  This exemption from rent and
taxes to continue for twenty years, and then to pay each 50 pounds a year
to the queen--that is to say, to the Crown.

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

Thus twenty families would be immediately supplied and provided for, for
there would be no doubt but these families, with so much land given them
gratis, and so much money to work with, would live very well; but what
would this do for the support of the rest, who were supposed to be, to
every twenty farmers, forty or fifty families of other people (some of
one trade, some of another), with women and children?  To this it was
answered that these twenty farmers would, by the consequence of their own
settlements, provide for and employ such a proportion of others of their
own people that, by thus providing for twenty families in a place, the
whole number of Palatinates would have been provided for, had they been
twenty thousand more in number than they were, and that without being any
burden upon or injury to the people of England; on the contrary, they
would have been an advantage and an addition of wealth and strength to
the nation, and to the country in particular where they should be thus
seated.  For example:--

As soon as the land was marked out, the farmers put in possession of it,
and the money given them, they should be obliged to go to work, in order
to their settlement.  Suppose it, then, to be in the spring of the year,
when such work was most proper.  First, all hands would be required to
fence and part off the land, and clear it of the timber or bushes, or
whatever else was upon it which required to be removed.  The first thing,
therefore, which the farmer would do would be to single out from the rest
of their number every one three servants--that is to say, two men and a
maid; less could not answer the preparations they would be obliged to
make, and yet work hard themselves also.  By the help of these they
would, with good management, soon get so much of their land cured, fenced-
off, ploughed, and sowed as should yield them a sufficiency of corn and
kitchen stuff the very first year, both for horse-meat, hog-meat, food
for the family, and some to carry to market, too, by which to bring in
money to go farther on, as above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They would then require a hatmaker, a glover, at least two ropemakers,
four tailors, three weavers of woollen and three weavers of linen, two
basket-makers, two common brewers, ten or twelve shop-keepers to furnish
chandlery and grocery wares, and as many for drapery and mercery, over
and above what they could work.  This makes two-and-forty families more,
each at five in a family, which, is two hundred and ten persons; all the
labouring part of these must have at least two servants (the brewers
more), which I cast up at forty more.

Add to these two ministers, one clerk, one sexton or grave-digger, with
their families, two physicians, three apothecaries, two surgeons (less
there could not be, only that for the beginning it might be said the
physicians should be surgeons, and I take them so); this is forty-five
persons, besides servants; so that, in short--to omit many tradesmen more
who would be wanted among them--there would necessarily and voluntarily
follow to these twenty families of farmers at least six hundred more of
their own people.

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

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

In the centre of the square was laid out a circle of twelve acres of
ground, to be cast into streets for inhabitants to build on as their
ability would permit--all that would build to have ground gratis for
twenty years, timber out of the forest, and convenient yards, gardens,
and orchards allotted to every house.

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

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

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

There was a calculation made of what increase there would be, both of
wealth and people, in twenty years in this town; what a vast consumption
of provisions they would cause, more than the four thousand acres of land
given them would produce, by which consumption and increase so much
advantage would accrue to the public stock, and so many subjects be added
to the many thousands of Great Britain, who in the next age would be all
true-born Englishmen, and forget both the language and nation from whence
they came.  And it was in order to this that two ministers were
appointed, one of which should officiate in English and the other in High
Dutch, and withal to have them obliged by a law to teach all their
children both to speak, read, and write the English language.

Upon their increase they would also want barbers and glaziers, painters
also, and plumbers; a windmill or two, and the millers and their
families; a fulling-mill and a cloth-worker; as also a master clothier or
two for making a manufacture among them for their own wear, and for
employing the women and children; a dyer or two for dyeing their
manufactures; and, which above all is not to be omitted, four families at
least of smiths, with every one two servants--considering that, besides
all the family work which continually employs a smith, all the shoeing of
horses, all the ironwork of ploughs, carts, waggons, harrows, &c., must
be wrought by them.  There was no allowance made for inns and ale-houses,
seeing it would be frequent that those who kept public-houses of any sort
would likewise have some other employment to carry on.

This was the scheme for settling the Palatinates, by which means twenty
families of farmers, handsomely set up and supported, would lay a
foundation, as I have said, for six or seven hundred of the rest of their
people; and as the land in New Forest is undoubtedly good, and capable of
improvement by such cultivation, so other wastes in England are to be
found as fruitful as that; and twenty such villages might have been
erected, the poor strangers maintained, and the nation evidently be
bettered by it.  As to the money to be advanced, which in the case of
twenty such settlements, at 1,000 pounds each, would be 80,000 pounds,
two things were answered to it:--

1.  That the annual rent to be received for all those lands after twenty
years would abundantly pay the public for the first disburses on the
scheme above, that rent being then to amount to 40,000 pounds per annum.

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

I reserved this account for this place, because I passed in this journey
over the very spot where the design was laid out--namely, near Lyndhurst,
in the road from Rumsey to Lymington, whither I now directed my course.

Lymington is a little but populous seaport standing opposite to the Isle
of Wight, in the narrow part of the strait which ships sometimes pass
through in fair weather, called the Needles; and right against an ancient
town of that island called Yarmouth, and which, in distinction from the
great town of Yarmouth in Norfolk, is called South Yarmouth.  This town
of Lymington is chiefly noted for making fine salt, which is indeed
excellent good; and from whence all these south parts of England are
supplied, as well by water as by land carriage; and sometimes, though not
often, they send salt to London, when, contrary winds having kept the
Northern fleets back, the price at London has been very high; but this is
very seldom and uncertain.  Lymington sends two members to Parliament,
and this and her salt trade is all I can say to her; for though she is
very well situated as to the convenience of shipping I do not find they
have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and
roguing; which, I may say, is the reigning commerce of all this part of
the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End of
Cornwall.

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

From hence I stepped up into the country north-west, to see the ancient
town of Wimborne, or Wimborneminster; there I found nothing remarkable
but the church, which is indeed a very great one, ancient, and yet very
well built, with a very firm, strong, square tower, considerably high;
but was, without doubt, much finer, when on the top of it stood a most
exquisite spire--finer and taller, if fame lies not, than that at
Salisbury, and by its situation in a plainer, flatter country visible, no
question, much farther; but this most beautiful ornament was blown down
by a sudden tempest of wind, as they tell us, in the year 1622.

The church remains a venerable piece of antiquity, and has in it the
remains of a place once much more in request than it is now, for here are
the monuments of several noble families, and in particular of one king,
viz., King Etheldred, who was slain in battle by the Danes.  He was a
prince famed for piety and religion, and, according to the zeal of these
times, was esteemed as a martyr, because, venturing his life against the
Danes, who were heathens, he died fighting for his religion and his
country.  The inscription upon his grave is preserved, and has been
carefully repaired, so as to be easily read, and is as follows:--

   "In hoc loco quiescit Corpus S. Etheldredi, Regis West Saxonum,
   Martyris, qui Anno Dom. DCCCLXXII., xxiii Aprilis, per Manos Danorum
   Paganorum Occubuit."

In English thus:--

   "Here rests the Body of Holy Etheldred, King of the West Saxons, and
   Martyr, who fell by the Hands of the Pagan Danes in the Year of our
   Lord 872, the 23rd of April."

Here are also the monuments of the great Marchioness of Exeter, mother of
Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and last of the family of Courtneys
who enjoyed that honour; as also of John de Beaufort, Duke of Somerset,
and his wife, grandmother of King Henry VII., by her daughter Margaret,
Countess of Richmond.

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

Having said this of the church, I have said all that is worth naming of
the town; except that the inhabitants, who are many and poor, are chiefly
maintained by the manufacture of knitting stockings, which employs great
part indeed of the county of Dorset, of which this is the first town
eastward.

South of this town, over a sandy, wild, and barren country, we came to
Poole, a considerable seaport, and indeed the most considerable in all
this part of England; for here I found some ships, some merchants, and
some trade; especially, here were a good number of ships fitted out every
year to the Newfoundland fishing, in which the Poole men were said to
have been particularly successful for many years past.

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

This place is famous for the best and biggest oysters in all this part of
England, which the people of Poole pretend to be famous for pickling; and
they are barrelled up here, and sent not only to London, but to the West
Indies, and to Spain and Italy, and other parts.  It is observed more
pearls are found in the Poole oysters, and larger, than in any other
oysters about England.

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

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

South of Wareham, and between the bay I have mentioned and the sea, lies
a large tract of land which, being surrounded by the sea except on one
side, is called an island, though it is really what should be called a
peninsula.  This tract of land is better inhabited than the sea-coast of
this west end of Dorsetshire generally is, and the manufacture of
stockings is carried on there also; it is called the Isle of Purbeck, and
has in the middle of it a large market-town, called Corfe, and from the
famous castle there the whole town is now called Corfe Castle; it is a
corporation, sending members to Parliament.

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

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

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

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

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

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

From hence we turned up to Dorchester, the county town, though not the
largest town in the county.  Dorchester is indeed a pleasant agreeable
town to live in, and where I thought the people seemed less divided into
factions and parties than in other places; for though here are divisions,
and the people are not all of one mind, either as to religion or
politics, yet they did not seem to separate with so much animosity as in
other places.  Here I saw the Church of England clergyman, and the
Dissenting minister or preacher drinking tea together, and conversing
with civility and good neighbourhood, like Catholic Christians and men of
a Catholic and extensive charity.  The town is populous, though not
large; the streets broad, but the buildings old and low.  However, there
is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat
in this world might as agreeably spend his time and as well in Dorchester
as in any town I know in England.

The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come up on, every
side, even to the very streets' end; and here it was that they told me
that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed on the downs within six
miles of the town--that is, six miles every way, which is twelve miles in
diameter, and thirty-six miles in circumference.  This, I say, I was
told--I do not affirm it to be true; but when I viewed the country round,
I confess I could not but incline to believe it.

It is observable of these sheep that they are exceeding fruitful, the
ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they are for that reason bought by
all the farmers through the east part of England, who come to Burford
Fair in this country to buy them, and carry them into Kent and Surrey
eastward, and into Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire
north; even our Banstead Downs in Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is
supplied from this place.  The grass or herbage of these downs is full of
the sweetest and the most aromatic plants, such as nourish the sheep to a
strange degree; and the sheep's dung, again, nourishes that herbage to a
strange degree; so that the valleys are rendered extremely fruitful by
the washing of the water in hasty showers from off these hills.

An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire, the next
county to this; for it is the same thing in proportion over this whole
county.  I was told that at this town there was a meadow on the bank of
the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury, which was let for 12
pounds a year per acre for the grass only.  This I inquired particularly
after at the place, and was assured by the inhabitants, as one man, that
the fact was true, and was showed the meadows.  The grass which grew on
them was such as grew to the length of ten or twelve feet, rising up to a
good height and then taking root again, and was of so rich a nature as to
answer very well such an extravagant rent.

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

There are abundance of good families, and of very ancient lines in the
neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the Courtneys,
Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells, Sydenhams, and many others,
some of which have very great estates in the county, and in particular
Colonel Strangeways, Napier, and Courtney.  The first of these is master
of the famous swannery or nursery of swans, the like of which, I believe,
is not in Europe.  I wonder any man should pretend to travel over this
country, and pass by it, too, and then write his account and take no
notice of it.

From Dorchester it is six miles to the seaside south, and the ocean in
view almost all the way.  The first town you come to is Weymouth, or
Weymouth and Melcombe, two towns lying at the mouth of a little rivulet
which they call the Wey, but scarce claims the name of a river.  However,
the entrance makes a very good though small harbour, and they are joined
by a wooden bridge; so that nothing but the harbour parts them; yet they
are separate corporations, and choose each of them two members of
Parliament, just as London and Southwark.

Weymouth is a sweet, clean, agreeable town, considering its low
situation, and close to the sea; it is well built, and has a great many
good substantial merchants in it who drive a considerable trade, and have
a good number of ships belonging to the town.  They carry on now, in time
of peace, a trade with France; but, besides this, they trade also to
Portugal, Spain, Newfoundland, and Virginia; and they have a large
correspondence also up in the country for the consumption of their
returns; especially the wine trade and the Newfoundland trade are
considerable here.

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

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

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

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

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

To prevent this danger, and guide the mariner in these distresses, they
have within these few months set up two lighthouses on the two points of
that island; and they had not been many months set up, with the
directions given to the public for their bearings, but we found three
outward-bound East India ships which were in distress in the night, in a
hard extreme gale of wind, were so directed by those lights that they
avoided going on shore by it, which, if the lights had not been there,
would inevitably happened to their destruction.

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

Though Portland stands a league off from the mainland of Britain, yet it
is almost joined by a prodigious riff of beach--that is to say, of small
stones cast up by the sea--which runs from the island so near the shore
of England that they ferry over with a boat and a rope, the water not
being above half a stone's-throw over; and the said riff of beach ending,
as it were, at that inlet of water, turns away west, and runs parallel
with the shore quite to Abbotsbury, which is a town about seven miles
beyond Weymouth.

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

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

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

From hence we went on to Bridport, a pretty large corporation town on the
sea-shore, though without a harbour.  Here we saw boats all the way on
the shore, fishing for mackerel, which they take in the easiest manner
imaginable; for they fix one end of the net to a pole set deep into the
sand, then, the net being in a boat, they row right out into the water
some length, then turn and row parallel with the shore, veering out the
net all the while, till they have let go all the net, except the line at
the end, and then the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling the net
to the shore at both ends, bring to shore with it such fish as they
surrounded in the little way they rowed.  This, at that time, proved to
be an incredible number, insomuch that the men could hardly draw them on
shore.  As soon as the boats had brought their fish on shore we observed
a guard or watch placed on the shore in several places, who, we found,
had their eye, not on the fishermen, but on the country people who came
down to the shore to buy their fish; and very sharp we found they were,
and some that came with small carts were obliged to go back empty without
any fish.  When we came to inquire into the particulars of this, we found
that these were officers placed on the shore by the justices and
magistrates of the towns about, who were ordered to prevent the country
farmers buying the mackerel to dung their land with them, which was
thought to be dangerous as to infection.  In short, such was the plenty
of fish that year that the mackerel, the finest and largest I ever saw,
were sold at the seaside a hundred for a penny.

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

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

It is a massy pile of building, consisting of high and thick walls of
stone, raised at first with all the methods that skill and art could
devise, but maintained now with very little difficulty.  The walls are
raised in the main sea at a good distance from the shore; it consists of
one main and solid wall of stone, large enough for carts and carriages to
pass on the top, and to admit houses and warehouses to be built on it, so
that it is broad as a street.  Opposite to this, but farther into the
sea, is another wall of the same workmanship, which crosses the end of
the first wall and comes about with a tail parallel to the first wall.

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

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

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

This town is under the government of a mayor and aldermen, and may pass
for a place of wealth, considering the bigness of it.  Here, we found,
the merchants began to trade in the pilchard-fishing, though not to so
considerable a degree as they do farther west--the pilchards seldom
coming up so high eastward as Portland, and not very often so high as
Lyme.

It was in sight of these hills that Queen Elizabeth's fleet, under the
command of the Lord Howard of Effingham (then Admiral), began first to
engage in a close and resolved fight with the invincible Spanish Armada
in 1588, maintaining the fight, the Spaniards making eastward till they
came the length of Portland Race, where they gave it over--the Spaniards
having received considerable damage, and keeping then closer together.
Off of the same place was a desperate engagement in the year 1672 between
the English and Dutch, in which the Dutch were worsted and driven over to
the coast of France, and then glad to make home to refit and repair.

While we stayed here some time viewing this town and coast, we had
opportunity to observe the pleasant way of conversation as it is managed
among the gentlemen of this county and their families, which are, without
reflection, some of the most polite and well-bred people in the isle of
Britain.  As their hospitality is very great, and their bounty to the
poor remarkable, so their generous friendly way of living with, visiting,
and associating one with another is as hard to be described as it is
really to be admired; they seem to have a mutual confidence in and
friendship with one another, as if they were all relations; nor did I
observe the sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among
the gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so much
known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet they
sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they see
occasion.

The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters, which
the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England are
recommended for.  Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are scandalously
said to carry themselves to market, and where every night they meet at
the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and yet I observed that the
women do not seem to stick on hand so much in this country as in those
countries where those assemblies are so lately set up--the reason of
which, I cannot help saying, if my opinion may bear any weight, is that
the Dorsetshire ladies are equal in beauty, and may be superior in
reputation.  In a word, their reputation seems here to be better kept,
guarded by better conduct, and managed with more prudence; and yet the
Dorsetshire ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled
about streets, or hide themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the whole
body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of behaviour, and
yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I nowhere see better in all
my observation through the whole isle of Britain.  In this little
interval also I visited some of the biggest towns in the north-west part
of this county, as Blandford--a town on the River Stour in the road
between Salisbury and Dorchester--a handsome well-built town, but chiefly
famous for making the finest bone-lace in England, and where they showed
me some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be had.  But
it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in that county,
such as no part of England can equal.

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

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

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

This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a high hill, which
closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presents you a new scene or
prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is all enclosed, and
grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge-rows; the country rich,
fertile, and populous; the towns and houses standing thick and being
large and full of inhabitants, and those inhabitants fully employed in
the richest and most valuable manufacture in the world--viz., the English
clothing, as well the medley or mixed clothing as whites, as well for the
home trade as the foreign trade, of which I shall take leave to be very
particular in my return through the west and north part of Wiltshire in
the latter part of this work.

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

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

It cannot pass my observation here that when we are come this length from
London the dialect of the English tongue, or the country way of
expressing themselves, is not easily understood--it is so strangely
altered.  It is true that it is so in many parts of England besides, but
in none in so gross a degree as in this part.  This way of boorish
country speech, as in Ireland it is called the "brogue" upon the tongue,
so here it is called "jouring;" and it is certain that though the tongue
be all mere natural English, yet those that are but a little acquainted
with them cannot understand one-half of what they say.  It is not
possible to explain this fully by writing, because the difference is not
so much in the orthography of words as in the tone and diction--their
abridging the speech, "cham" for "I am," "chil" for "I will," "don" for
"put on," and "doff" for "put off," and the like.  And I cannot omit a
short story here on this subject.  Coming to a relation's house, who was
a school-master at Martock, in Somersetshire, I went into his school to
beg the boys a play-day, as is usual in such cases (I should have said,
to beg the master a play-day.  But that by the way).  Coming into the
school, I observed one of the lowest scholars was reading his lesson to
the usher, which lesson, it seems, was a chapter in the Bible.  So I sat
down by the master till the boy had read out his chapter.  I observed the
boy read a little oddly in the tone of the country, which made me the
more attentive, because on inquiry I found that the words were the same
and the orthography the same as in all our Bibles.  I observed also the
boy read it out with his eyes still on the book and his head (like a mere
boy) moving from side to side as the lines reached cross the columns of
the book.  His lesson was in the Canticles, v. 3 of chap. v.  The words
these:--"I have put off my coat.  How shall I put it on?  I have washed
my feet.  How shall I defile them?"

The boy read thus, with his eyes, as I say, full on the text:--"Chav a
doffed my cooat.  How shall I don't?  Chav a washed my veet.  How shall I
moil 'em?"

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

There lived a good substantial family in the town not far from the "Angel
Inn"--a well-known house, which was then, and, I suppose, is still, the
chief inn of the town.  This family had a dog which, among his other good
qualities for which they kept him (for he was a rare house-dog), had this
bad one--that he was a most notorious thief, but withal so cunning a dog,
and managed himself so warily, that he preserved a mighty good reputation
among the neighbourhood.  As the family was well beloved in the town, so
was the dog.  He was known to be a very useful servant to them,
especially in the night (when he was fierce as a lion; but in the day the
gentlest, lovingest creature that could be), and, as they said, all the
neighbours had a good word for this dog.

It happened that the good wife or mistress at the "Angel Inn" had
frequently missed several pieces of meat out of the pail, as they say--or
powdering-tub, as we call it--and that some were very large pieces.  It
is also to be observed the dog did not stay to eat what he took upon the
spot, in which case some pieces or bones or fragments might be left, and
so it might be discovered to be a dog; but he made cleaner work, and when
he fastened upon a piece of meat he was sure to carry it quite away to
such retreats as he knew he could be safe in, and so feast upon it at
leisure.

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

Having found the thief and got him in custody, the master of the house, a
good-humoured fellow, and loth to disoblige the dog's master by executing
the criminal, as the dog law directs, mitigates his sentence, and handled
him as follows:--First, taking out his knife, he cut off both his ears;
and then, bringing him to the threshold, he chopped off his tail.  And
having thus effectually dishonoured the poor cur among his neighbours, he
tied a string about his neck, and a piece of paper to the string,
directed to his master, and with these witty West Country verses on it:--

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

I could give many more accounts of the different dialects of the people
of this country, in some of which they are really not to be understood;
but the particulars have little or no diversion in them.  They carry it
such a length that we see their "jouring" speech even upon their
monuments and grave-stones; as, for example, even in some of the
churchyards of the city of Bristol I saw this excellent poetry after some
other lines:--

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

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

This is a large and beautiful market-town, very populous and well built,
and is so very remarkably paved with small pebbles that on either side
the way a little channel is left shouldered up on the sides of it, so
that it holds a small stream of fine clear running water, with a little
square dipping-place left at every door; so that every family in the town
has a clear, clean running river (as it may be called) just at their own
door, and this so much finer, so much pleasanter, and agreeable to look
on than that at Salisbury (which they boast so much of), that, in my
opinion, there is no comparison.

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

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

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

Honiton is one of those, and may pass not only for a pleasant good town,
as before, but stands in the best and pleasantest part of the whole
county, and I cannot but recommend it to any gentlemen that travel this
road, that if they please to observe the prospect for half a mile till
their coming down the hill and to the entrance into Honiton, the view of
the country is the most beautiful landscape in the world--a mere
picture--and I do not remember the like in any one place in England.  It
is observable that the market of this town was kept originally on the
Sunday, till it was changed by the direction of King John.

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

From hence we came to Exeter, a city famous for two things which we
seldom find unite in the same town--viz., that it is full of gentry and
good company, and yet full of trade and manufactures also.  The serge
market held here every week is very well worth a stranger's seeing, and
next to the Brigg Market at Leeds, in Yorkshire, is the greatest in
England.  The people assured me that at this market is generally sold
from sixty to seventy to eighty, and sometimes a hundred, thousand pounds
value in serges in a week.  I think it is kept on Mondays.

They have the River Esk here, a very considerable river, and principal in
the whole county; and within three miles, or thereabouts, it receives
ships of any ordinary burthen, the port there being called Topsham.  But
now by the application, and at the expense, of the citizens the channel
of the river is so widened, deepened, and cleansed from the shoal, which
would otherwise interrupt the navigation, that the ships come now quite
up to the city, and there with ease both deliver and take in their
lading.

This city drives a very great correspondence with Holland, as also
directly to Portugal, Spain, and Italy--shipping off vast quantities of
their woollen manufactures especially to Holland, the Dutch giving very
large commissions here for the buying of serges perpetuans, and such
goods; which are made not only in and about Exeter, but at Crediton,
Honiton, Culliton, St.-Mary-Ottery, Newton Bushel, Ashburton, and
especially at Tiverton, Cullompton, Bampton, and all the north-east part
of the county--which part of the county is, as it may be said, fully
employed, the people made rich, and the poor that are properly so called
well subsisted and employed by it.

Exeter is a large, rich, beautiful, populous, and was once a very strong
city; but as to the last, as the castle, the walls, and all the old works
are demolished, so, were they standing, the way of managing sieges and
attacks of towns is such now, and so altered from what it was in those
days, that Exeter in the utmost strength it could ever boast would not
now hold out five days open trenches--nay, would hardly put an army to
the trouble of opening trenches against it at all.  This city was famous
in the late civil unnatural war for its loyalty to the king, and for
being a sanctuary to the queen, where her Majesty resided for some time,
and here she was delivered of a daughter, being the Princess Henrietta
Maria, of whom our histories give a particular account, so I need say no
more of it here.

The cathedral church of this city is an ancient beauty, or, as it may be
said, it is beautiful for its antiquity; but it has been so fully and
often described that it would look like a mere copying from others to
mention it.  There is a good library kept in it, in which are some
manuscripts, and particularly an old missal or mass-book, the leaves of
vellum, and famous for its most exquisite writing.

This county, and this part of it in particular, has been famous for the
birth of several eminent men as well for learning as for arts and for
war, as particularly:--

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

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

3.  Also Sir Francis Drake, born at Plymouth.

4.  Sir Walter Raleigh.  Of both those I need say nothing; fame publishes
their merit upon every mention of their names.

5.  That great patron of learning, Richard Hooker, author of the
"Ecclesiastical Polity," and of several other valuable pieces.

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

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

8.  Dr. John de Brampton, a man of great learning who flourished in the
reign of Henry VI., was famous for being the first that read Aristotle
publicly in the University of Cambridge, and for several learned books of
his writing, which are now lost.

9.  Peter Blundel, a clothier, who built the free school at Tiverton, and
endowed it very handsomely; of which in its place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This excessive plenty of so good fish (and other provisions being
likewise very cheap in proportion) makes the town of Totnes a very good
place to live in; especially for such as have large families and but
small estates.  And many such are said to come into those parts on
purpose for saving money, and to live in proportion to their income.

From hence we went still south about seven miles (all in view of this
river) to Dartmouth, a town of note, seated at the mouth of the River
Dart, and where it enters into the sea at a very narrow but safe
entrance.  The opening into Dartmouth Harbour is not broad, but the
channel deep enough for the biggest ship in the Royal Navy.  The sides of
the entrance are high-mounded with rocks, without which, just at the
first narrowing of the passage, stands a good strong fort without a
platform of guns, which commands the port.

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

The matter was that a great shoal--or, as they call it, a "school"--of
pilchards came swimming with the tide of flood, directly out of the sea
into the harbour.  My friend whose boat we were in told me this was a
surprise which he would have been very glad of if he could but have had a
day or two's warning, for he might have taken 200 tons of them.  And the
like was the case of other merchants in town; for, in short, nobody was
ready for them, except a small fishing-boat or two--one of which went out
into the middle of the harbour, and at two or three hauls took about
forty thousand of them.  We sent our servant to the quay to buy some, who
for a halfpenny brought us seventeen, and, if he would have taken them,
might have had as many more for the same money.  With these we went to
dinner; the cook at the inn broiled them for us, which is their way of
dressing them, with pepper and salt, which cost us about a farthing; so
that two of us and a servant dined--and at a tavern, too--for three
farthings, dressing and all.  And this is the reason of telling the tale.
What drink--wine or beer--we had I do not remember; but, whatever it was,
that we paid for by itself.  But for our food we really dined for three
farthings, and very well, too.  Our friend treated us the next day with a
dish of large lobsters, and I being curious to know the value of such
things, and having freedom enough with him to inquire, I found that for
6d. or 8d. they bought as good lobsters there as would have cost in
London 3s. to 3s. 6d. each.

In observing the coming in of those pilchards, as above, we found that
out at sea, in the offing, beyond the mouth of the harbour, there was a
whole army of porpoises, which, as they told us, pursued the pilchards,
and, it is probable, drove them into the harbour, as above.  The school,
it seems, drove up the river a great way, even as high as Totnes Bridge,
as we heard afterwards; so that the country people who had boats and nets
catched as many as they knew what to do with, and perhaps lived upon
pilchards for several days.  But as to the merchants and trade, their
coming was so sudden that it was no advantage to them.

Round the west side of this basin or harbour, in a kind of a semicircle,
lies the town of Dartmouth, a very large and populous town, though but
meanly built, and standing on the side of a steep hill; yet the quay is
large, and the street before it spacious.  Here are some very flourishing
merchants, who trade very prosperously, and to the most considerable
trading ports of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the Plantations; but
especially they are great traders to Newfoundland, and from thence to
Spain and Italy, with fish; and they drive a good trade also in their own
fishery of pilchards, which is hereabouts carried on with the greatest
number of vessels of any port in the west, except Falmouth.

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

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

This town, as most of the towns of Devonshire are, is full of Dissenters,
and a very large meeting-house they have here.  How they act here with
respect to the great dispute about the doctrine of the Trinity, which has
caused such a breach among those people at Exeter and other parts of the
county, I cannot give any account of.  This town sends two members to
Parliament.

From hence we went to Plympton, a poor and thinly-inhabited town, though
blessed with the like privilege of sending members to the Parliament, of
which I have little more to say but that from thence the road lies to
Plymouth, distance about six miles.

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

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

Mr. Winstanley often visited, and frequently strengthened, the building
by new works, and was so confident of its firmness and stability that he
usually said he only desired to be in it when a storm should happen; for
many people had told him it would certainly fall if it came to blow a
little harder than ordinary.

But he happened at last to be in it once too often--namely, when that
dreadful tempest blew, November 27, 1703.  This tempest began on the
Wednesday before, and blew with such violence, and shook the lighthouse
so much, that, as they told me there, Mr. Winstanley would fain have been
on shore, and made signals for help; but no boats durst go off to him;
and, to finish the tragedy, on the Friday, November 26, when the tempest
was so redoubled that it became a terror to the whole nation, the first
sight there seaward that the people of Plymouth were presented with in
the morning after the storm was the bare Eddystone, the lighthouse being
gone; in which Mr. Winstanley and all that were with him perished, and
were never seen or heard of since.  But that which was a worse loss still
was that, a few days after, a merchant's ship called the _Winchelsea_,
homeward bound from Virginia, not knowing the Eddystone lighthouse was
down, for want of the light that should have been seen, run foul of the
rock itself, and was lost with all her lading and most of her men.  But
there is now another light-house built on the same rock.

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

One thing which I was a witness to on a former journey to this place, I
cannot omit.  It was the next year after that great storm, and but a
little sooner in the year, being in August; I was at Plymouth, and
walking on the Hoo (which is a plain on the edge of the sea, looking to
the road), I observed the evening so serene, so calm, so bright, and the
sea so smooth, that a finer sight, I think, I never saw.  There was very
little wind, but what was, seemed to be westerly; and about an hour
after, it blew a little breeze at south-west, with which wind there came
into the Sound that night and the next morning a fleet of fourteen sail
of ships from Barbadoes, richly laden for London.  Having been long at
sea, most of the captains and passengers came on shore to refresh
themselves, as is usual after such tedious voyages; and the ships rode
all in the Sound on that side next to Catwater.  As is customary upon
safe arriving to their native country, there was a general joy and
rejoicing both on board and on shore.

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

This was a melancholy morning indeed.  Nothing was to be seen but wrecks
of the ships and a foaming, furious sea in that very place where they
rode all in joy and triumph but the evening before.  The captains,
passengers, and officers who were, as I have said, gone on shore, between
the joy of saving their lives, and the affliction of having lost their
ships, their cargoes, and their friends, were objects indeed worth our
compassion and observation.  And there was a great variety of the
passions to be observed in them--now lamenting their losses, their giving
thanks for their deliverance.  Many of the passengers had lost their all,
and were, as they expressed themselves, "utterly undone."  They were, I
say, now lamenting their losses with violent excesses of grief; then
giving thanks for their lives, and that they should be brought on shore,
as it were, on purpose to be saved from death; then again in tears for
such as were drowned.  The various cases were indeed very affecting, and,
in many things, very instructing.

As I say, Plymouth lies in the bottom of this Sound, in the centre
between the two waters, so there lies against it, in the same position,
an island, which they call St. Nicholas, on which there is a castle which
commands the entrance into Hamoaze, and indeed that also into Catwater in
some degree.  In this island the famous General Lambert, one of
Cromwell's great agents or officers in the rebellion, was imprisoned for
life, and lived many years there.

On the shore over against this island is the citadel of Plymouth, a small
but regular fortification, inaccessible by sea, but not exceeding strong
by land, except that they say the works are of a stone hard as marble,
and would not seen yield to the batteries of an enemy--but that is a
language our modern engineers now laugh at.

The town stands above this, upon the same rock, and lies sloping on the
side of it, towards the east--the inlet of the sea which is called
Catwater, and which is a harbour capable of receiving any number of ships
and of any size, washing the eastern shore of the town, where they have a
kind of natural mole or haven, with a quay and all other conveniences for
bringing in vessels for loading and unloading; nor is the trade carried
on here inconsiderable in itself, or the number of merchants small.

The other inlet of the sea, as I term it, is on the other side of the
town, and is called Hamoaze, being the mouth of the River Tamar, a
considerable river which parts the two counties of Devon and Cornwall.
Here (the war with France making it necessary that the ships of war
should have a retreat nearer hand than at Portsmouth) the late King
William ordered a wet dock--with yards, dry docks, launches, and
conveniences of all kinds for building and repairing of ships--to be
built; and with these followed necessarily the building of store-houses
and warehouses for the rigging, sails, naval and military stores, &c., of
such ships as may be appointed to be laid up there, as now several are;
with very handsome houses for the commissioners, clerks, and officers of
all kinds usual in the king's yards, to dwell in.  It is, in short, now
become as complete an arsenal or yard for building and fitting men-of-war
as any the Government are masters of, and perhaps much more convenient
than some of them, though not so large.

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

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

The town is populous and wealthy, having, as above, several considerable
merchants and abundance of wealthy shopkeepers, whose trade depends upon
supplying the sea-faring people that upon so many occasions put into that
port.  As for gentlemen--I mean, those that are such by family and birth
and way of living--it cannot be expected to find many such in a town
merely depending on trade, shipping, and sea-faring business; yet I found
here some men of value (persons of liberal education, general knowledge,
and excellent behaviour), whose society obliges me to say that a
gentleman might find very agreeable company in Plymouth.

From Plymouth we pass the Tamar over a ferry to Saltash--a little, poor,
shattered town, the first we set foot on in the county of Cornwall.  The
Tamar here is very wide, and the ferry-boats bad; so that I thought
myself well escaped when I got safe on shore in Cornwall.

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

This town has a kind of jurisdiction upon the River Tamar down to the
mouth of the port, so that they claim anchorage of all small ships that
enter the river; their coroner sits upon all dead bodies that are found
drowned in the river and the like, but they make not much profit of them.
There is a good market here, and that is the best thing to be said of the
town; it is also very much increased since the number of the inhabitants
are increased at the new town, as I mentioned as near the dock at the
mouth of Hamoaze, for those people choose rather to go to Saltash to
market by water than to walk to Plymouth by land for their provisions.
Because, first, as they go in the town boat, the same boat brings home
what they buy, so that it is much less trouble; second, because
provisions are bought much cheaper at Saltash than at Plymouth.  This, I
say, is like to be a very great advantage to the town of Saltash, and may
in time put a new face of wealth upon the place.

They talk of some merchants beginning to trade here, and they have some
ships that use the Newfoundland fishery; but I could not hear of anything
considerable they do in it.  There is no other considerable town up the
Tamar till we come to Launceston, the county town, which I shall take in
my return; so I turned west, keeping the south shore of the county to the
Land's End.

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

This town of Liskeard was once eminent, had a good castle, and a large
house, where the ancient Dukes of Cornwall kept their court in those
days; also it enjoyed several privileges, especially by the favour of the
Black Prince, who as Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall resided here.
And in return they say this town and the country round it raised a great
body of stout young fellows, who entered into his service and followed
his fortunes in his wars in France, as also in Spain.  But these
buildings are so decayed that there are now scarce any of the ruins of
the castle or of the prince's court remaining.

The only public edifices they have now to show are the guild or town
hall, on which there is a turret with a fine clock; a very good free
school, well provided; a very fine conduit in the market-place; an
ancient large church; and, which is something rare for the county of
Cornwall, a large, new-built meeting-house for the Dissenters, which I
name because they assured me there was but three more, and those very
inconsiderable, in all the county of Cornwall; whereas in Devonshire,
which is the next county, there are reckoned about seventy, some of which
are exceeding large and fine.

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

Between these two towns of Saltash and Liskeard is St. Germans, now a
village, decayed, and without any market, but the largest parish in the
whole county--in the bounds of which is contained, as they report,
seventeen villages, and the town of Saltash among them; for Saltash has
no parish church, it seems, of itself, but as a chapel-of-ease to St.
Germans.  In the neighbourhood of these towns are many pleasant seats of
the Cornish gentry, who are indeed very numerous, though their estates
may not be so large as is usual in England; yet neither are they
despicable in that part; and in particular this may be said of them--that
as they generally live cheap, and are more at home than in other
counties, so they live more like gentlemen, and keep more within bounds
of their estates than the English generally do, take them all together.

Add to this that they are the most sociable, generous, and to one another
the kindest, neighbours that are to be found; and as they generally live,
as we may say, together (for they are almost always at one another's
houses), so they generally intermarry among themselves, the gentlemen
seldom going out of the county for a wife, or the ladies for a husband;
from whence they say that proverb upon them was raised, viz., "That all
the Cornish gentlemen are cousins."

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

From Liskeard, in our course west, we are necessarily carried to the sea-
coast, because of the River Fowey or Fowath, which empties itself into
the sea at a very large mouth.  And hereby this river rising in the
middle of the breadth of the county and running south, and the River
Camel rising not far from it and running north, with a like large
channel, the land from Bodmin to the western part of the county is almost
made an island and in a manner cut off from the eastern part--the
peninsula, or neck of land between, being not above twelve miles over.

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

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

Edward IV. favoured them much; and because the French threatened them to
come up their river with a powerful navy to burn their town, he caused
two forts to be built at the public charge for security of the town and
river, which forts--at least, some show of them--remain there still.  But
the same King Edward was some time after so disgusted at the townsmen for
officiously falling upon the French, after a truce was made and
proclaimed, that he effectually disarmed them, took away their whole
fleet, ships, tackle, apparel, and furniture; and since that time we do
not read of any of their naval exploits, nor that they ever recovered or
attempted to recover their strength at sea.  However, Foy at this time is
a very fair town; it lies extended on the east side of the river for
above a mile, the buildings fair.  And there are a great many flourishing
merchants in it, who have a great share in the fishing trade, especially
for pilchards, of which they take a great quantity hereabouts.  In this
town is also a coinage for the tin, of which a great quantity is dug up
in the country north and west of the town.

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

This town of Lostwithiel retains, however, several advantages which
support its figure--as, first, that it is one of the Coinage Towns, as I
call them; or Stannary Towns, as others call them; (2) the common gaol
for the whole Stannary is here, as are also the County Courts for the
whole county of Cornwall.

There is a mock cavalcade kept up at this town, which is very remarkable.
The particulars, as they are related by Mr. Carew in his "Survey of
Cornwall," take as follows:--

"Upon Little Easter Sunday the freeholders of this town and manor, by
themselves or their deputies, did there assemble; amongst whom one (as it
fell to his lot by turn), bravely apparelled, gallantly mounted, with a
crown on his head, a sceptre in his hand, and a sword borne before him,
and dutifully attended by all the rest (also on horseback), rode through
the principal street to the church.  The curate in his best beseen
solemnly received him at the churchyard stile, and conducted him to hear
divine service.  After which he repaired, with the same pomp, to a house
provided for that purpose, made a feast to his attendants, kept the
table's-end himself, and was served with kneeling assay and all other
rights due to the estate of a prince; with which dinner the ceremony
ended, and every man returned home again.  The pedigree of this usage is
derived from so many descents of ages that the cause and author outreach
the remembrance.  Howbeit, these circumstances afford a conjecture that
it should betoken royalties appertaining to the honour of Cornwall."

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

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

Passing from hence, and ferrying over Foy River or the River Foweth (call
it as you please), we come into a large country without many towns in it
of note, but very well furnished with gentlemen's seats, and a little
higher up with tin-works.

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

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

St. Maws and Pendennis are two fortifications placed at the points or
entrance of this haven, opposite to one another, though not with a
communication or view; they are very strong--the first principally by
sea, having a good platform of guns pointing athwart the Channel, and
planted on a level with the water.  But Pendennis Castle is strong by
land as well as by water, is regularly fortified, has good out-works, and
generally a strong garrison.  St. Maws, otherwise called St. Mary's, has
a town annexed to the castle, and is a borough sending members to the
Parliament.  Pendennis is a mere fortress, though there are some
habitations in it, too, and some at a small distance near the seaside,
but not of any great consideration.

The town of Falmouth is by much the richest and best trading town in this
county, though not so ancient as its neighbour town of Truro; and indeed
is in some things obliged to acknowledge the seigniority--namely, that in
the corporation of Truro the person whom they choose to be their Mayor of
Truro is also Mayor of Falmouth of course.  How the jurisdiction is
managed is an account too long for this place.  The Truro-men also
receive several duties collected in Falmouth, particularly wharfage for
the merchandises landed or shipped off; but let these advantages be what
they will, the town of Falmouth has gotten the trade--at least, the best
part of it--from the other, which is chiefly owing to the situation.  For
that Falmouth lying upon the sea, but within the entrance, ships of the
greatest burthen come up to the very quays, and the whole Royal Navy
might ride safely in the road; whereas the town of Truro lying far
within, and at the mouth of two fresh rivers, is not navigable for
vessels of above 150 tons or thereabouts.

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

But let this be as it will, the trade is now in a manner wholly gone to
Falmouth, the trade at Truro being now chiefly (if not only) for the
shipping off of block tin and copper ore, the latter being lately found
in large quantities in some of the mountains between Truro and St.
Michael's, and which is much improved since the several mills are erected
at Bristol and other parts for the manufactures of battery ware, as it is
called (brass), or which is made out of English copper, most of it duct
in these parts--the ore itself ago being found very rich and good.

Falmouth is well built, has abundance of shipping belonging to it, is
full of rich merchants, and has a flourishing and increasing trade.  I
say "increasing," because by the late setting up the English packets
between this port and Lisbon, there is a new commerce between Portugal
and this town carried on to a very great value.

It is true, part of this trade was founded in a clandestine commerce
carried on by the said packets at Lisbon, where, being the king's ships,
and claiming the privilege of not being searched or visited by the Custom
House officers, they found means to carry off great quantities of British
manufactures, which they sold on board to the Portuguese merchants, and
they conveyed them on shore, as it is supposed, without paying custom.

But the Government there getting intelligence of it, and complaint being
made in England also, where it was found to be very prejudicial to the
fair merchant, that trade has been effectually stopped.  But the Falmouth
merchants, having by this means gotten a taste of the Portuguese trade,
have maintained it ever since in ships of their own.  These packets bring
over such vast quantities of gold in specie, either in _moidores_ (which
is the Portugal coin) or in bars of gold, that I am very credibly
informed the carrier from Falmouth brought by land from thence to London
at one time, in the month of January, 1722, or near it, eighty thousand
_moidores_ in gold, which came from Lisbon in the packet-boats for
account of the merchants at London, and that it was attended with a guard
of twelve horsemen well armed, for which the said carrier had half per
cent. for his hazard.

This is a specimen of the Portugal trade, and how considerable it is in
itself, as well as how advantageous to England; but as that is not to the
present case, I proceed.  The Custom House for all the towns in this
port, and the head collector, is established at this town, where the
duties (including the other ports) is very considerable.  Here is also a
very great fishing for pilchards; and the merchants for Falmouth have the
chief stroke in that gainful trade.

Truro is, however, a very considerable town, too.  It stands up the water
north and by east from Falmouth, in the utmost extended branch of the
Avon, in the middle between the conflux of two rivers, which, though not
of any long course, have a very good appearance for a port, and make it
large wharf between them in the front of the town.  And the water here
makes a good port for small ships, though it be at the influx, but not
for ships of burthen.  This is the particular town where the Lord-Warden
of the Stannaries always holds his famous Parliament of miners, and for
stamping of tin.  The town is well built, but shows that it has been much
fuller, both of houses and inhabitants, than it is now; nor will it
probably ever rise while the town of Falmouth stands where it does, and
while the trade is settled in it as it is.  There are at least three
churches in it, but no Dissenters' meeting-house that I could hear of.

Tregony is upon the same water north-east from Falmouth--distance about
fifteen miles from it--but is a town of very little trade; nor, indeed,
have any of the towns, so far within the shore, notwithstanding the
benefit of the water, any considerable trade but what is carried on under
the merchants of Falmouth or Truro.  The chief thing that is to be said
of this town is that it sends members to Parliament, as does also
Grampound, a market-town; and Burro', about four miles farther up the
water.  This place, indeed, has a claim to antiquity, and is an appendix
to the Duchy of Cornwall, of which it holds at a fee farm rent and pays
to the Prince of Wales as duke 10 pounds 11s. 1d. per annum.  It has no
parish church, but only a chapel-of-ease to an adjacent parish.

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

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

This town is large and populous, and has four spacious streets, a
handsome church, and a good trade.  This town also sends members to
Parliament.  Beyond this is a market-town, though of no resort for trade,
called Market Jew.  It lies, indeed, on the seaside, but has no harbour
or safe road for shipping.

At Helford is a small but good harbour between Falmouth and this port,
where many times the tin-ships go in to load for London; also here are a
good number of fishing vessels for the pilchard trade, and abundance of
skilful fishermen.  It was from this town that in the great storm which
happened November 27, 1703, a ship laden with tin was blown out to sea
and driven to the Isle of Wight in seven hours, having on board only one
man and two boys.  The story is as follows:--

"The beginning of the storm there lay a ship laden with tin in Helford
Haven, about two leagues and a half west of Falmouth.  The tin was taken
on board at a place called Guague Wharf, five or six miles up the river,
and the vessel was come down to Helford in order to pursue her voyage to
London.

"About eight o'clock in the evening the commander, whose name was Anthony
Jenkins, went on board with his mate to see that everything was safe, and
to give orders, but went both on shore again, leaving only a man and two
boys on board, not apprehending any danger, they being in safe harbour.
However, he ordered them that if it should blow hard they should carry
out the small bower anchor, and so to moor the ship by two anchors, and
then giving what other orders he thought to be needful, he went ashore,
as above.

"About nine o'clock, the wind beginning to blow harder, they carried out
the anchor, according to the master's order; but the wind increasing
about ten, the ship began to drive, so they carried out their best bower,
which, having a good new cable, brought the ship up.  The storm still
increasing, they let go the kedge anchor; so that they then rode by four
anchors ahead, which were all they had.

"But between eleven and twelve o'clock the wind came about west and by
south, and blew in so violent and terrible a manner that, though they
rode under the lee of a high shore, yet the ship was driven from all her
anchors, and about midnight drove quite out of the harbour (the opening
of the harbour lying due east and west) into the open sea, the men having
neither anchor or cable or boat to help themselves.

"In this dreadful condition (they driving, I say, out of the harbour)
their first and chief care was to go clear of the rocks which lie on
either side the harbour's mouth, and which they performed pretty well.
Then, seeing no remedy, they consulted what to do next.  They could carry
no sail at first--no, not a knot; nor do anything but run away afore it.
The only thing they had to think on was to keep her out at sea as far as
they could, for fear of a point of land called the Dead Man's Head, which
lies to the eastward of Falmouth Haven; and then, if they could escape
the land, thought to run in for Plymouth next morning, so, if possible,
to save their lives.

"In this frighted condition they drove away at a prodigious rate, having
sometimes the bonnet of their foresail a little out, but the yard lowered
almost to the deck--sometimes the ship almost under water, and sometimes
above, keeping still in the offing, for fear of the land, till they might
see daylight.  But when the day broke they found they were to think no
more of Plymouth, for they were far enough beyond it; and the first land
they made was Peverel Point, being the southernmost land of the Isle of
Purbeck, in Dorsetshire, and a little to the westward of the Isle of
Wight; so that now they were in a terrible consternation, and driving
still at a prodigious rate.  By seven o'clock they found themselves
broadside of the Isle of Wight.

"Here they consulted again what to do to save their lives.  One of the
boys was for running her into the Downs; but the man objected that,
having no anchor or cable nor boat to go on shore with, and the storm
blowing off shore in the Downs, they should be inevitably blown off and
lost upon the unfortunate Goodwin--which, it seems, the man had been on
once before and narrowly escaped.

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

"But when they came nearer, and the people found they steered as if they
knew the place, they made signals to them to direct them as well as they
could, and the young bold fellow run her into a small cove, where she
stuck fast, as it were, between the rocks on both sides, there being but
just room enough for the breadth of the ship.  The ship indeed, giving
two or three knocks, staved and sunk, but the man and the two youths
jumped ashore and were safe; and the lading, being tin, was afterwards
secured.

"N.B.--The merchants very well rewarded the three sailors, especially the
lad that ran her into that place."

Penzance is the farthest town of any note west, being 254 miles from
London, and within about ten miles of the promontory called the Land's
End; so that this promontory is from London 264 miles, or thereabouts.
This town of Penzance is a place of good business, well built and
populous, has a good trade, and a great many ships belonging to it,
notwithstanding it is so remote.  Here are also a great many good
families of gentlemen, though in this utmost angle of the nation; and,
which is yet more strange, the veins of lead, tin, and copper ore are
said to be seen even to the utmost extent of land at low-water mark, and
in the very sea--so rich, so valuable, a treasure is contained in these
parts of Great Britain, though they are supposed to be so poor, because
so very remote from London, which is the centre of our wealth.

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

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

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

I am now at my journey's end.  As to the islands of Scilly, which lie
beyond the Land's End, I shall say something of them presently.  I must
now return _sur mes pas_, as the French call it; though not literally so,
for I shall not come back the same way I went.  But as I have coasted the
south shore to the Land's End, I shall come back by the north coast, and
my observations in my return will furnish very well materials for another
letter.



APPENDIX TO LAND'S END.


I have ended this account at the utmost extent of the island of Great
Britain west, without visiting those excrescences of the island, as I
think I may call them--viz., the rocks of Scilly; of which what is most
famous is their infamy or reproach; namely, how many good ships are
almost continually dashed in pieces there, and how many brave lives lost,
in spite of the mariners' best skill, or the lighthouses' and other sea-
marks' best notice.

These islands lie so in the middle between the two vast openings of the
north and south narrow seas (or, as the sailors call them, the Bristol
Channel, and The Channel--so called by way of eminence) that it cannot,
or perhaps never will, be avoided but that several ships in the dark of
the night and in stress of weather, may, by being out in their
reckonings, or other unavoidable accidents, mistake; and if they do, they
are sure, as the sailors call it, to run "bump ashore" upon Scilly, where
they find no quarter among the breakers, but are beat to pieces without
any possibility of escape.

One can hardly mention the Bishop and his Clerks, as they are called, or
the rocks of Scilly, without letting fall a tear to the memory of Sir
Cloudesley Shovel and all the gallant spirits that were with him, at one
blow and without a moment's warning dashed into a state of
immortality--the admiral, with three men-of-war, and all their men
(running upon these rocks right afore the wind, and in a dark night)
being lost there, and not a man saved.  But all our annals and histories
are full of this, so I need say no more.

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

This may be the reason why, as we observed during our short stay here,
several mornings after it had blown something hard in the night, the
sands were covered with country people running to and fro to see if the
sea had cast up anything of value.  This the seamen call "going
a-shoring;" and it seems they do often find good purchase.  Sometimes
also dead bodies are cast up here, the consequence of shipwrecks among
those fatal rocks and islands; as also broken pieces of ships, casks,
chests, and almost everything that will float or roll on shore by the
surges of the sea.

Nor is it seldom that the voracious country people scuffle and fight
about the right to what they find, and that in a desperate manner; so
that this part of Cornwall may truly be said to be inhabited by a fierce
and ravenous people.  For they are so greedy, and eager for the prey,
that they are charged with strange, bloody, and cruel dealings, even
sometimes with one another; but especially with poor distressed seamen
when they come on shore by force of a tempest, and seek help for their
lives, and where they find the rooks themselves not more merciless than
the people who range about them for their prey.

Here, also, as a farther testimony of the immense riches which have been
lost at several times upon this coast, we found several engineers and
projectors--some with one sort of diving engine, and some with another;
some claiming such a wreck, and some such-and-such others; where they
alleged they were assured there were great quantities of money; and
strange unprecedented ways were used by them to come at it: some, I say,
with one kind of engine, and some another; and though we thought several
of them very strange impracticable methods, yet I was assured by the
country people that they had done wonders with them under water, and that
some of them had taken up things of great weight and in a great depth of
water.  Others had split open the wrecks they had found in a manner one
would have thought not possible to be done so far under water, and had
taken out things from the very holds of the ships.  But we could not
learn that they had come at any pieces of eight, which was the thing they
seemed most to aim at and depend upon; at least, they had not found any
great quantity, as they said they expected.

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

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

Upon a former accidental journey into this part of the country, during
the war with France, it was with a mixture of pleasure and horror that we
saw from the hills at the Lizard, which is the southern-most point of
this land, an obstinate fight between three French men-of-war and two
English, with a privateer and three merchant-ships in their company.  The
English had the misfortune, not only to be fewer ships of war in number,
but of less force; so that while the two biggest French ships engaged the
English, the third in the meantime took the two merchant-ships and went
off with them.  As to the picaroon or privateer, she was able to do
little in the matter, not daring to come so near the men-of-war as to
take a broadside, which her thin sides would not have been able to bear,
but would have sent her to the bottom at once; so that the English men-of-
war had no assistance from her, nor could she prevent the taking the two
merchant-ships.  Yet we observed that the English captains managed their
fight so well, and their seamen behaved so briskly, that in about three
hours both the Frenchmen stood off, and, being sufficiently banged, let
us see that they had no more stomach to fight; after which the
English--having damage enough, too, no doubt--stood away to the eastward,
as we supposed, to refit.

This point of the Lizard, which runs out to the southward, and the other
promontory mentioned above, make the two angles--or horns, as they are
called--from whence it is supposed this county received its first name of
Cornwall, or, as Mr. Camden says, _Cornubia_ in the Latin, and in the
British "Kernaw," as running out in two vastly extended horns.  And
indeed it seems as if Nature had formed this situation for the direction
of mariners, as foreknowing of what importance it should be, and how in
future ages these seas should be thus thronged with merchant-ships, the
protection of whose wealth, and the safety of the people navigating them,
was so much her early care that she stretched out the land so very many
ways, and extended the points and promontories so far and in so many
different places into the sea, that the land might be more easily
discovered at a due distance, which way soever the ships should come.

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

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

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

Nature has fortified this part of the island of Britain in a strange
manner, and so, as is worth a traveller's observation, as if she knew the
force and violence of the mighty ocean which beats upon it; and which,
indeed, if the land was not made firm in proportion, could not withstand,
but would have been washed away long ago.

First, there are the islands of Scilly and the rocks about them; these
are placed like out-works to resist the first assaults of this enemy, and
so break the force of it, as the piles (or starlings, as they are called)
are placed before the solid stonework of London Bridge to fence off the
force either of the water or ice, or anything else that might be
dangerous to the work.

Then there are a vast number of sunk rocks (so the seamen call them),
besides such as are visible and above water, which gradually lessen the
quantity of water that would otherwise lie with an infinite weight and
force upon the land.  It is observed that these rocks lie under water for
a great way off into the sea on every side the said two horns or points
of land, so breaking the force of the water, and, as above, lessening the
weight of it.

But besides this the whole _terra firma_, or body of the land which makes
this part of the isle of Britain, seems to be one solid rock, as if it
was formed by Nature to resist the otherwise irresistible power of the
ocean.  And, indeed, if one was to observe with what fury the sea comes
on sometimes against the shore here, especially at the Lizard Point,
where there are but few, if any, out-works, as I call them, to resist it;
how high the waves come rolling forward, storming on the neck of one
another (particularly when the wind blows off sea), one would wonder that
even the strongest rocks themselves should be able to resist and repel
them.  But, as I said, the country seems to be, as it were, one great
body of stone, and prepared so on purpose.

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

This is certain--that there is a more than ordinary quantity of tin,
copper, and lead also placed by the Great Director of Nature in these
very remote angles (and, as I have said above, the ore is found upon the
very surface of the rocks a good way into the sea); and that it does not
only lie, as it were, upon or between the stones among the earth (which
in that case might be washed from it by the sea), but that it is even
blended or mixed in with the stones themselves, that the stones must be
split into pieces to come at it.  By this mixture the rocks are made
infinitely weighty and solid, and thereby still the more qualified to
repel the force of the sea.

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

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



TWO LETTERS
FROM THE "JOURNEY THROUGH ENGLAND BY A GENTLEMAN."


_Published in_ 1722, _but not by Defoe_.



BATH IN 1722.


_Bath_.

SIR,

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

I told you in my former letters that Epsom and Tunbridge do not allow
visiting (the companies there meet only on the walks); but here visits
are received and returned, assemblies and balls are given, and parties at
play in most houses every night, to which one Mr. Nash hath for many
years contributed very much.  This gentleman is by custom a sort of
master of ceremonies of the place; he is not of any birth nor estate, but
by a good address and assurance ingratiates himself into the good graces
of the ladies and the best company in the place, and is director of all
their parties of pleasure.  He wears good clothes, is always affluent of
money, plays very much, and whatever he may get in private, yet in public
he always seems to lose.  The town have been for many years so sensible
of the service he does them that they ring the bells generally at his
arrival in town, and, it is thought, pay him a yearly contribution for
his support.

In the morning early the company of both sexes meet at the Pump (in a
great hall enrailed), to drink the waters and saunter about till prayer-
time, or divert themselves by looking on those that are bathing in the
bath.  Most of the company go to church in the morning in dishabille, and
then go home to dress for the walks before dinner.  The walks are behind
the church, spacious and well shaded, planted round with shops filled
with everything that contributes to pleasure, and at the end a noble room
for gaming, from whence there are hanging-stairs to a pretty garden for
everybody that pays for the time they stay, to walk in.

I have often wondered that the physicians of these places prescribe
gaming to their patients, in order to keep their minds free from business
and thought, that their waters on an undisturbed mind may have the
greater effect, when indeed one cross-throw at play must sour a man's
blood more than ten glasses of water will sweeten, especially for such
great sums as they throw for every day at Bath.

The King and Queen's Baths, which have a communication with one another,
are the baths which people of common rank go into promiscuously; and
indeed everybody, except the first quality.  The way of going into them
is very comical: a chair with a couple of chairmen come to your bedside
(lie in what storey you will), and there strip you, and give you their
dress without your shift, and wrapping you up in blankets carry you to
the bath.

When you enter the bath, the water seems very warm; and the heat much
increases as you go into the Queen's Bath, where the great spring rises.
On a column erected over the spring is an inscription of the first finder-
out of these springs, in the following words: that "Bladud, the son of
Lud, found them three hundred years before Christ."  The smoke and slime
of the waters, the promiscuous multitude of the people in the bath, with
nothing but their heads and hands above water, with the height of the
walls that environ the bath, gave me a lively idea of several pictures I
had seen, of Angelo's in Italy of Purgatory, with heads and hands
uplifted in the midst of smoke, just as they are here.  After bathing,
you are carried home in your chair, in the same manner you came.

The Cross Bath, which is used by the people of the first quality, was
beautified and inclosed for the convenience of the late King James's
queen, who after the priests and physicians had been at work to procure a
male successor to the throne of Great Britain, the Sacrament exposed in
all the Roman Catholic countries, and for that end a sanctified smock
sent from the Virgin Mary at Loretto, the queen was ordered to go to Bath
and prepare herself, and the king to make a progress through the western
counties and join her there.  On his arrival at Bath, the next day after
his conjunction with the queen, the Earl of Melfort (then Secretary of
State for Scotland) erected a fine prophetic monument in the middle of
the Bath, as an everlasting monument of that conjunction.  I call it
"prophetic," because nine months after a Prince of Wales was born.  This
monument is still entire and handsome, only some of the inscriptions on
the pillar were erased in King William's time.  The angels attending the
Holy Ghost as He descends, the Eucharist, the Pillar, and all the
ornaments are of fine marble, and must have cost that earl a great deal
of money.  He was second son to Drummond, Earl of Perth, in North
Britain; and was Deputy Governor of the Castle of Edinburgh when the Duke
and Duchess of York came to Scotland, in King Charles the Second's time.
He was a handsome gentleman, with a good address, and went into all the
measures of that court, and at all their balls generally danced with the
duchess; who, on their accession to the throne, sent for him up to
London, made him Secretary of State for Scotland, created him Earl of
Melfort, and Knight of the Order of St. Andrew.  His elder brother was
also made Chancellor and Governor of Scotland.  And on King James's
abdication, as the two brothers followed the king's fortunes, the Earl of
Perth was made governor to the young prince; and Melfort was created a
duke, had the Garter, and was a great man in France to his dying day.

There is another bath for lepers.

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

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

Everything looks gay and serene here; it is plentiful and cheap.  Only
the taverns do not much improve, for it is a place of universal sobriety.
To be drunk at Bath is as scandalous as mad.  Common women are not to be
met with here so much as at Tunbridge and Epsom.  Whether it is the
distance from London, or that the gentlemen fly at the highest game, I
cannot tell; besides, everything that passes here is known on the walks,
and the characters of persons.

In three hours one arrives from Bath at Bristol, a large, opulent, and
fine city; but, notwithstanding its nearness, by the different manners of
the people seems to be another country.  Instead of that politeness and
gaiety which you see at Bath, here is nothing but hurry--carts driving
along with merchandises, and people running about with cloudy looks and
busy faces.  When I came to the Exchange I was surprised to see it
planted round with stone pillars, with broad boss-plates on them like sun-
dials, and coats-of-arms with inscriptions on every plate.

They told me that these pillars were erected by eminent merchants for the
benefit of writing and despatching their affairs on them, as on tables;
and at 'Change time the merchants take each their stands by their
pillars, that masters of ships and owners may know where to find them.

Coffee-houses and taverns lie round the 'Change, just as at London; and
the Bristol milk, which is Spanish sherry (nowhere so good as here), is
plentifully drunk.

The city of Bristol is situated much like Verona, in Italy.  A river runs
through almost the middle of it, on which there is a fine stone bridge.
The quay may be made the finest, largest, and longest in the world by
pulling down an old house or two.  Behind the quay is a very noble
square, as large as that of Soho in London, in which is kept the Custom
House; and most of the eminent merchants who keep their coaches reside
here.  The cathedral is on the other side of the river, on the top of the
hill, and is the meanest I have seen in England.  But the square or green
adjoining to it has several fine houses, and makes by its situation, in
my opinion, much the pleasantest part of the town.  There are some
churches in the city finer than the cathedral, and your merchants have
their little country-seats in the adjacent eminences; of which that of
Mr. Southwell hath a very commanding prospect, both of the city, the
River Severn, and the shipping that lies below.

There are hot springs near Bristol that are also very much frequented,
and are reckoned to be better than the Bath for some distempers.

A traveller when he comes to the Bath must never fail of seeing
Badminton, belonging to the Dukes of Beaufort; nor Longleat, belonging to
my Lord Weymouth.  They are both within a few miles of the Bath.  King
William, when he took Badminton in his way from Ireland, told the duke
that he was not surprised at his not coming to court, having so sumptuous
a palace to keep a court of his own in.  And indeed the apartments are
inferior to few royal palaces.  The parks are large, and enclosed with a
stone wall; and that duke, whom I described to you in my letter from
Windsor, lived up to the grandeur of a sovereign prince.  His grandson,
who was also Knight of the Garter, made a great figure in the reign of
Queen Anne.  The family, which is a natural branch of the house of
Lancaster, have always distinguished themselves of the Tory side.  The
present duke is under age.

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

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

As the weather grows good, I shall proceed through South Wales to
Chester, from whence you shall soon hear from me, who am without reserve,
sir, your most humble, &c.



FROM CHESTER TO HOLYHEAD.


_Chester_.

SIR,

I crossed the Severn at the ferry of Ash, about ten miles above Bristol,
and got to Monmouth to dinner through a rugged, indifferent country.  It
is a pitiful old town, and hath nothing remarkable in it; and from thence
through a fat fertile country I got to the city of Hereford at night.

Hereford is the dirtiest old city I have seen in England, yet pretty
large; the streets are irregular and the houses old, and its cathedral a
reverend old pile, but not beautiful; the niches of the walls of the
church are adorned with the figures of its bishops as big as the life, in
a cumbent posture, with the year of their interments newly painted over.
Some of them are in the twelve hundredth year of Christ.  Here they drink
nothing but cider, which is very cheap and very good; and the very hedges
in the country are planted with apple-trees.  About three miles from
Hereford in my road to Ludlow I saw a fine old seat called Hampton Court,
belonging to my Lord Coningsby.  The plantations on rising grounds round
it give an august splendour to the house, which consists of an oval court
with suitable offices, not unlike an house belonging to the Duke of
Somerset near London; and from thence in a few hours I arrived at Ludlow,
the capital of South Wales, and where the Princes of Wales formerly, and
since them the Presidents of Wales, kept their courts.

Ludlow is one of the neatest, clean, pretty towns in England.  The street
by which you enter the town is spacious, with handsome houses
sash-windowed on each side, which leads you by an ascent to the castle on
the left of the top of the hill, and the church on the right, from whence
there runs also another handsome street.  The castle hath a very
commanding prospect of the adjacent country; the offices in the outer
court are falling down, and a great part of the court is turned into a
bowling-green; but the royal apartments in the castle, with some old
velvet furniture and a sword of state, are still left.  There is also a
neat little chapel; but the vanity of the Welsh gentry when they were
made councillors has spoiled it by adorning it with their names and arms,
of which it is full.

A small expense would still make this castle a habitable and beautiful
place, lying high, and overlooking a fine country; there is also a fine
prospect from the churchyard, and the church is very neat.  I saw
abundance of pretty ladies here, and well dressed, who came from the
adjacent counties, for the convenience and cheapness of boarding.
Provisions of all sorts are extremely plentiful and cheap here, and very
good company.

I stayed some days here, to make an excursion into South Wales and know a
little of the manners of the country, as I design to do at Chester for
North Wales.  The gentry are very numerous, exceedingly civil to
strangers, if you don't come to purchase and make your abode amongst
them.  They live much like Gascoynes--affecting their own language,
valuing themselves much on the antiquity of their families, and are proud
of making entertainments.

The Duke of Powis, of the name of Herbert, hath a noble seat near this
town, but I was not at it; the family followed King James's fortunes to
France, and I suppose the seat lies neglected.  From Ludlow in a short
day's riding through a champaign country I arrived at the town of
Shrewsbury.

Shrewsbury stands upon an eminence, encircled by the Severn like a horse-
shoe; the streets are large, and the houses well built.  My Lord Newport,
son to the Earl of Bradford, hath a handsome palace, with hanging gardens
down to the river; as also Mr. Kinnaston, and some other gentlemen.  There
is a good town-house, and the most coffee-houses round it that ever I saw
in any town; but when you come into them, they are but ale-houses (only
they think that the name of coffee-house gives a better air).  King
Charles would have made them a city, but they chose rather to remain a
corporation, as they are, for which they were called the "proud
Salopians."  There is a great deal of good company in this town, for the
convenience of cheapness; and there are assemblies and balls for the
young ladies once a week.  The Earl of Bradford and several others have
handsome seats near it; from hence I came to Wrexham, in Wales, a
beautiful market-town; the church is the beautifullest country church in
England, and surpasses some cathedrals.  I counted fifty-two statues as
big as the life in the steeple or tower, which is built after the manner
of your Dutch steeples, and as high as any there.  I was there on a
market-day, and was particularly pleased to see the Welsh ladies come to
market in their laced hats, their own hair hanging round their shoulders,
and blue and scarlet cloaks like our Amazons--some of them with a
greyhound in a string in their hands.

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

From Flint, along the seaside, in three hours I arrived at the famous
cold bath called St. Winifred's Well; and the town from thence called
Holywell is a pretty large well-built village, in the middle of a grove,
in a bottom between, two hills.  The well is in the foot of one of the
hills, and spouts out about the bigness of a barrel at once, with such
force that it turns three or four mills before it falls into the sea.  The
well where you bathe is floored with stone surrounded with pillars, on
which stands a neat little chapel dedicated to St. Winifred, but now
turned into a Protestant school.  However, to supply the loss of this
chapel, the Roman Catholics have chapels erected almost in every inn for
the devotion of the pilgrims that flock hither from all the Popish parts
of England.  The water, you may imagine, is very cold, coming from the
bowels of an iron mountain, and never having met with the influence of
the sun till it runs from the well.

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

In every inn you meet with a priest, habited like country gentlemen, and
very good companions.  At the "Cross Keys," where I lodged, there was one
that had been marked out to me, to whom I was particularly civil at
supper; but finding by my conversation I was none of them, he drank and
swore like a dragoon, on purpose, as I imagine, to disguise himself.  From
Holywell in two hours I came to a handsome seat of Sir John Conway's at
Redland, and next day to Conway.

I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finer landscape in a
picture than Conway at a mile's distance.  It lies on the side of a hill,
on the banks of an arm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at
London, and within two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go
to the town.

The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on
the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an
august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both
sides of the bay or river, covered with wood.  But when you cross the
ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery.
The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls
only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of their
own.

They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose his way in this
county of Carnarvon, it is ten to one if he meets with any one that has
English enough to set him right.  The people are also naturally very
surly, and even if they understand English, if you ask them a question
their answer is, "Dame Salsenach," or "I cannot speak Saxon or English."
Their Bibles and prayer-books are all printed in Welsh in our character;
so that an Englishman can read their language, although he doth not
understand a word of it.  It hath a great resemblance of the Bas-Bretons,
but they retain the letter and character as well as language, as the
Scots and Highlanders do.

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

They have also offerings at funerals, which is one of the greatest
perquisites the parson hath.  When the body is deposited in the church
during the service for the dead, every person invited to the burial lays
a piece of money upon the altar to defray the dead person's charges to
the other world, which, after the ceremony is over, the parson puts in
his pocket.  From Conway, through the mountainous country of Carnarvon, I
passed the famous mountain of Penmaen-Mawr, so dreadfully related by
passengers travelling to Ireland.  It is a road cut out of the side of
the rock, seven feet wide; the sea lies perpendicularly down, about forty
fathoms on one side, and the mountain is about the same height above it
on the other side.  It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for there
is now a wall breast-high along the precipice.  However, there is an ale-
house at the bottom of the hill on the other side, with this inscription,
"Now your fright is over, take a dram."  From hence I proceeded to a
little town called Bangor, where there is a cathedral such as may be
expected in Wales; and from thence to Carnarvon, the capital of the
county.  Here are the vestiges of a large old castle, where one of the
Henrys, King of England, was born; as was another at Monmouth, in South
Wales.  For the Welsh were so hard to be reconciled to their union with
England at first, it was thought policy to send our queens to lie-in
there, to make our princes Welshmen born, and that way ingratiate the
inhabitants to their subjection to a prince born in their own country.
And for that reason our kings to this day wear a leek (the badge of
Wales) on St. David's Day, the patron of this country; as they do the
Order of the Thistle on St. Andrew's Day, the patron of Scotland.

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

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

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

I was invited to a cock-match some miles from Glengauny, where were above
forty gentlemen, most of them of the names of Owen, Parry, and Griffith;
they fought near twenty battles, and every battle a cock was killed.
Their cocks are doubtless the finest in the world; and the gentlemen,
after they were a little heated with liquor, were as warm as their cocks.
A great deal of bustle and noise grew by degrees after dinner was over;
but their scolding was all in Welsh, and civilities in English.  We had a
very great dinner; and the house (called The College) where we dined was
built very comically; it is four storeys high, built on the side of a
hill, and the stable is in the garret.  There is a broad stone staircase
on the outside of the house, by which you enter into the several
apartments.  The kitchen is at the bottom of the hill, a bedchamber above
that, the parlour (where we dined) is the third storey, and on the top of
the hill is the stable.

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

The packet-boats from Dublin arrive thrice a week, and are larger than
those to Holland and France, fitted with all conveniences for passengers;
and indeed St. George's Channel requires large ships in winter, the wind
being generally very boisterous in these narrow seas.

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

* * * * *

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