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.