Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722









I began my travels where I purpose to end them, viz., at the City

of London, and therefore my account of the city itself will come

last, that is to say, at the latter end of my southern progress;

and as in the course of this journey I shall have many occasions to

call it a circuit, if not a circle, so I chose to give it the title

of circuits in the plural, because I do not pretend to have

travelled it all in one journey, but in many, and some of them many

times over; the better to inform myself of everything I could find

worth taking notice of.



I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the more capable

of giving a full account of things, by how much the more

deliberation I have taken in the view of them, and by how much the

oftener I have had opportunity to see them.



I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took

what I think I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter

of it; for I went down by the coast of the Thames through the

Marshes or Hundreds on the south side of the county of Essex, till

I came to Malden, Colchester, and Harwich, thence continuing on the

coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth; thence round by the edge of the sea,

on the north and west side of Norfolk, to Lynn, Wisbech, and the

Wash; thence back again, on the north side of Suffolk and Essex, to

the west, ending it in Middlesex, near the place where I began it,

reserving the middle or centre of the several counties to some

little excursions, which I made by themselves.



Passing Bow Bridge, where the county of Essex begins, the first

observation I made was, that all the villages which may be called

the neighbourhood of the city of London on this, as well as on the

other sides thereof, which I shall speak to in their order; I say,

all those villages are increased in buildings to a strange degree,

within the compass of about twenty or thirty years past at the

most.



The village of Stratford, the first in this county from London, is

not only increased, but, I believe, more than doubled in that time;

every vacancy filled up with new houses, and two little towns or

hamlets, as they may be called, on the forest side of the town

entirely new, namely Maryland Point and the Gravel Pits, one facing

the road to Woodford and Epping, and the other facing the road to

Ilford; and as for the hither part, it is almost joined to Bow, in

spite of rivers, canals, marshy grounds, &c.  Nor is this increase

of building the case only in this and all the other villages round

London; but the increase of the value and rent of the houses

formerly standing has, in that compass of years above-mentioned,

advanced to a very great degree, and I may venture to say at least

the fifth part; some think a third part, above what they were

before.



This is indeed most visible, speaking of Stratford in Essex; but it

is the same thing in proportion in other villages adjacent,

especially on the forest side; as at Low Leyton, Leytonstone,

Walthamstow, Woodford, Wanstead, and the towns of West Ham,

Plaistow, Upton, etc.  In all which places, or near them (as the

inhabitants say), above a thousand new foundations have been

erected, besides old houses repaired, all since the Revolution; and

this is not to be forgotten too, that this increase is, generally

speaking, of handsome, large houses, from 20 pounds a year to 60

pounds, very few under 20 pounds a year; being chiefly for the

habitations of the richest citizens, such as either are able to

keep two houses, one in the country and one in the city; or for

such citizens as being rich, and having left off trade, live

altogether in these neighbouring villages, for the pleasure and

health of the latter part of their days.



The truth of this may at least appear, in that they tell me there

are no less than two hundred coaches kept by the inhabitants within

the circumference of these few villages named above, besides such

as are kept by accidental lodgers.



This increase of the inhabitants, and the cause of it, I shall

enlarge upon when I come to speak of the like in the counties of

Middlesex, Surrey, &c, where it is the same, only in a much greater

degree.  But this I must take notice of here, that this increase

causes those villages to be much pleasanter and more sociable than

formerly, for now people go to them, not for retirement into the

country, but for good company; of which, that I may speak to the

ladies as well as other authors do, there are in these villages,

nay, in all, three or four excepted, excellent conversation, and a

great deal of it, and that without the mixture of assemblies,

gaming-houses, and public foundations of vice and debauchery; and

particularly I find none of those incentives kept up on this side

the country.



Mr. Camden, and his learned continuator, Bishop Gibson, have

ransacked this country for its antiquities, and have left little

unsearched; and as it is not my present design to say much of what

has been said already, I shall touch very lightly where two such

excellent antiquaries have gone before me; except it be to add what

may have been since discovered, which as to these parts is only

this: That there seems to be lately found out in the bottom of the

Marshes (generally called Hackney Marsh, and beginning near about

the place now called the Wick, between Old Ford and the said Wick),

the remains of a great stone causeway, which, as it is supposed,

was the highway, or great road from London into Essex, and the same

which goes now over the great bridge between Bow and Stratford.



That the great road lay this way, and that the great causeway

landed again just over the river, where now the Temple Mills stand,

and passed by Sir Thomas Hickes's house at Ruckolls, all this is

not doubted; and that it was one of those famous highways made by

the Romans there is undoubted proof, by the several marks of Roman

work, and by Roman coins and other antiquities found there, some of

which are said to be deposited in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Strype,

vicar of the parish of Low Leyton.



From hence the great road passed up to Leytonstone, a place by some

known now as much by the sign of the "Green Man," formerly a lodge

upon the edge of the forest; and crossing by Wanstead House,

formerly the dwelling of Sir Josiah Child, now of his son the Lord

Castlemain (of which hereafter), went over the same river which we

now pass at Ilford; and passing that part of the great forest which

we now call Hainault Forest, came into that which is now the great

road, a little on this side the Whalebone, a place on the road so

called because the rib-bone of a great whale, which was taken in

the River Thames the same year that Oliver Cromwell died, 1658, was

fixed there for a monument of that monstrous creature, it being at

first about eight-and-twenty feet long.



According to my first intention of effectually viewing the sea-

coast of these three counties, I went from Stratford to Barking, a

large market-town, but chiefly inhabited by fishermen, whose smacks

ride in the Thames, at the mouth of their river, from whence their

fish is sent up to London to the market at Billingsgate by small

boats, of which I shall speak by itself in my description of

London.



One thing I cannot omit in the mention of these Barking fisher-

smacks, viz., that one of those fishermen, a very substantial and

experienced man, convinced me that all the pretences to bringing

fish alive to London market from the North Seas, and other remote

places on the coast of Great Britain, by the new-built sloops

called fish-pools, have not been able to do anything but what their

fishing-smacks are able on the same occasion to perform.  These

fishing-smacks are very useful vessels to the public upon many

occasions; as particularly, in time of war they are used as press-

smacks, running to all the northern and western coasts to pick up

seamen to man the navy, when any expedition is at hand that

requires a sudden equipment; at other times, being excellent

sailors, they are tenders to particular men of war; and on an

expedition they have been made use of as machines for the blowing

up of fortified ports and havens; as at Calais, St. Malo, and other

places.



This parish of Barking is very large, and by the improvement of

lands taken in out of the Thames, and out of the river which runs

by the town, the tithes, as the townsmen assured me, are worth

above 600 pounds per annum, including, small tithes.  NOTE. - This

parish has two or three chapels of ease, viz., one at Ilford, and

one on the side of Hainault Forest, called New Chapel.



Sir Thomas Fanshaw, of an ancient Roman Catholic family, has a very

good estate in this parish.  A little beyond the town, on the road

to Dagenham, stood a great house, ancient, and now almost fallen

down, where tradition says the Gunpowder Treason Plot was at first

contrived, and that all the first consultations about it were held

there.



This side of the county is rather rich in land than in inhabitants,

occasioned chiefly by the unhealthiness of the air; for these low

marsh grounds, which, with all the south side of the county, have

been saved out of the River Thames, and out of the sea, where the

river is wide enough to be called so, begin here, or rather begin

at West Ham, by Stratford, and continue to extend themselves, from

hence eastward, growing wider and wider till we come beyond

Tilbury, when the flat country lies six, seven, or eight miles

broad, and is justly said to be both unhealthy and unpleasant.



However, the lands are rich, and, as is observable, it is very good

farming in the marshes, because the landlords let good pennyworths,

for it being a place where everybody cannot live, those that

venture it will have encouragement and indeed it is but reasonable

they should.



Several little observations I made in this part of the county of

Essex.



1.  We saw, passing from Barking to Dagenham, the famous breach,

made by an inundation of the Thames, which was so great as that it

laid near 5,000 acres of land under water, but which after near ten

years lying under water, and being several times blown up, has been

at last effectually stopped by the application of Captain Perry,

the gentleman who, for several years, had been employed in the Czar

of Muscovy's works, at Veronitza, on the River Don.  This breach

appeared now effectually made up, and they assured us that the new

work, where the breach was, is by much esteemed the strongest of

all the sea walls in that level.



2.  It was observable that great part of the lands in these levels,

especially those on this side East Tilbury, are held by the

farmers, cow-keepers, and grazing butchers who live in and near

London, and that they are generally stocked (all the winter half

year) with large fat sheep, viz., Lincolnshire and Leicestershire

wethers, which they buy in Smithfield in September and October,

when the Lincolnshire and Leicestershire graziers sell off their

stock, and are kept here till Christmas, or Candlemas, or

thereabouts; and though they are not made at all fatter here than

they were when bought in, yet the farmer or butcher finds very good

advantage in it, by the difference of the price of mutton between

Michaelmas, when it is cheapest, and Candlemas, when it is dearest;

this is what the butchers value themselves upon, when they tell us

at the market that it is right marsh-mutton.



3.  In the bottom of these Marshes, and close to the edge of the

river, stands the strong fortress of Tilbury, called Tilbury Fort,

which may justly be looked upon as the key of the River Thames, and

consequently the key of the City of London.  It is a regular

fortification.  The design of it was a pentagon, but the water

bastion, as it would have been called, was never built.  The plan

was laid out by Sir Martin Beckman, chief engineer to King Charles

II., who also designed the works at Sheerness.  The esplanade of

the fort is very large, and the bastions the largest of any in

England, the foundation is laid so deep, and piles under that,

driven down two an end of one another, so far, till they were

assured they were below the channel of the river, and that the

piles, which were shed with iron, entered into the solid chalk rock

adjoining to, or reaching from, the chalk hills on the other side.

These bastions settled considerably at first, as did also part of

the curtain, the great quantity of earth that was brought to fill

them up, necessarily, requiring to be made solid by time; but they

are now firm as the rocks of chalk which they came from, and the

filling up one of these bastions, as I have been told by good

hands, cost the Government 6,000 pounds, being filled with chalk

rubbish fetched from the chalk pits at Northfleet, just above

Gravesend.



The work to the land side is complete; the bastions are faced with

brick.  There is a double ditch, or moat, the innermost part of

which is 180 feet broad; there is a good counterscarp, and a

covered way marked out with ravelins and tenailles, but they are

not raised a second time after their first settling.



On the land side there are also two small redoubts of brick, but of

very little strength, for the chief strength of this fort on the

land side consists in this, that they are able to lay the whole

level under water, and so to make it impossible for an enemy to

make any approaches to the fort that way.



On the side next the river there is a very strong curtain, with a

noble gate called the Water Gate in the middle, and the ditch is

palisadoed.  At the place where the water bastion was designed to

be built, and which by the plan should run wholly out into the

river, so to flank the two curtains of each side; I say, in the

place where it should have been, stands a high tower, which they

tell us was built in Queen Elizabeth's time, and was called the

Block House; the side next the water is vacant.



Before this curtain, above and below the said vacancy, is a

platform in the place of a counterscarp, on which are planted 106

pieces of cannon, generally all of them carrying from twenty-four

to forty-six pound ball; a battery so terrible as well imports the

consequence of that place; besides which, there are smaller pieces

planted between, and the bastions and curtain also are planted with

guns; so that they must be bold fellows who will venture in the

biggest ships the world has heard of to pass such a battery, if the

men appointed to serve the guns do their duty like stout fellows,

as becomes them.



The present government of this important place is under the prudent

administration of the Right Honourable the Lord Newbrugh.



From hence there is nothing for many miles together remarkable but

a continued level of unhealthy marshes, called the Three Hundreds,

till we come before Leigh, and to the mouth of the River Chelmer,

and Blackwater.  These rivers united make a large firth, or inlet

of the sea, which by Mr. Camden is called IDUMANUM FLUVIUM; but by

our fishermen and seamen, who use it as a port, it is called Malden

Water.



In this inlet of the sea is Osey, or Osyth Island, commonly called

Oosy Island, so well known by our London men of pleasure for the

infinite number of wild fowl, that is to say, duck, mallard, teal,

and widgeon, of which there are such vast flights, that they tell

us the island, namely the creek, seems covered with them at certain

times of the year, and they go from London on purpose for the

pleasure of shooting; and, indeed, often come home very well laden

with game.  But it must be remembered too that those gentlemen who

are such lovers of the sport, and go so far for it, often return

with an Essex ague on their backs, which they find a heavier load

than the fowls they have shot.



It is on this shore, and near this creek, that the greatest

quantity of fresh fish is caught which supplies not this country

only, but London markets also.  On the shore, beginning a little

below Candy Island, or rather below Leigh Road, there lies a great

shoal or sand called the Black Tail, which runs out near three

leagues into the sea due east; at the end of it stands a pole or

mast, set up by the Trinity House men of London, whose business is

to lay buoys and set up sea marks for the direction of the sailors;

this is called Shoe Beacon, from the point of land where this sand

begins, which is called Shoeburyness, and that from the town of

Shoebury, which stands by it.  From this sand, and on the edge of

Shoebury, before it, or south west of it, all along, to the mouth

of Colchester water, the shore is full of shoals and sands, with

some deep channels between; all which are so full of fish, that not

only the Barking fishing-smacks come hither to fish, but the whole

shore is full of small fisher-boats in very great numbers,

belonging to the villages and towns on the coast, who come in every

tide with what they take; and selling the smaller fish in the

country, send the best and largest away upon horses, which go night

and day to London market.



N.B. - I am the more particular in my remarks on this place,

because in the course of my travels the reader will meet with the

like in almost every place of note through the whole island, where

it will be seen how this whole kingdom, as well the people as the

land, and even the sea, in every part of it, are employed to

furnish something, and I may add, the best of everything, to supply

the City of London with provisions; I mean by provisions, corn,

flesh, fish, butter, cheese, salt, fuel, timber, etc., and clothes

also; with everything necessary for building, and furniture for

their own use or for trade; of all which in their order.



On this shore also are taken the best and nicest, though not the

largest, oysters in England; the spot from whence they have their

common appellation is a little bank called Woelfleet, scarce to be

called an island, in the mouth of the River Crouch, now called

Crooksea Water; but the chief place where the said oysters are now

had is from Wyvenhoe and the shores adjacent, whither they are

brought by the fishermen, who take them at the mouth of that they

call Colchester water and about the sand they call the Spits, and

carry them up to Wyvenhoe, where they are laid in beds or pits on

the shore to feed, as they call it; and then being barrelled up and

carried to Colchester, which is but three miles off, they are sent

to London by land, and are from thence called Colchester oysters.



The chief sort of other fish which they carry from this part of the

shore to London are soles, which they take sometimes exceeding

large, and yield a very good price at London market.  Also

sometimes middling turbot, with whiting, codling and large

flounders; the small fish, as above, they sell in the country.



In the several creeks and openings, as above, on this shore there

are also other islands, but of no particular note, except Mersey,

which lies in the middle of the two openings between Malden Water

and Colchester Water; being of the most difficult access, so that

it is thought a thousand men well provided might keep possession of

it against a great force, whether by land or sea.  On this account,

and because if possessed by an enemy it would shut up all the

navigation and fishery on that side, the Government formerly built

a fort on the south-east point of it; and generally in case of

Dutch war, there is a strong body of troops kept there to defend

it.



At this place may be said to end what we call the Hundreds of Essex

- that is to say, the three Hundreds or divisions which include the

marshy country, viz., Barnstable Hundred, Rochford Hundred, and

Dengy Hundred.



I have one remark more before I leave this damp part of the world,

and which I cannot omit on the women's account, namely, that I took

notice of a strange decay of the sex here; insomuch that all along

this country it was very frequent to meet with men that had had

from five or six to fourteen or fifteen wives; nay, and some more.

And I was informed that in the marshes on the other side of the

river over against Candy Island there was a farmer who was then

living with the five-and-twentieth wife, and that his son, who was

but about thirty-five years old, had already had about fourteen.

Indeed, this part of the story I only had by report, though from

good hands too; but the other is well known and easy to be inquired

into about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet, Prittlewell,

Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham, Dengy, and other

towns of the like situation.  The reason, as a merry fellow told

me, who said he had had about a dozen and a half of wives (though I

found afterwards he fibbed a little) was this: That they being bred

in the marshes themselves and seasoned to the place, did pretty

well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly country,

or, to speak their own language, into the uplands for a wife.  That

when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air

they were healthy, fresh, and clear, and well; but when they came

out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps,

there they presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two,

and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; "And

then," said he, "we go to the uplands again and fetch another;" so

that marrying of wives was reckoned a kind of good farm to them.

It is true the fellow told this in a kind of drollery and mirth;

but the fact, for all that, is certainly true; and that they have

abundance of wives by that very means.  Nor is it less true that

the inhabitants in these places do not hold it out, as in other

countries, and as first you seldom meet with very ancient people

among the poor, as in other places we do, so, take it one with

another, not one-half of the inhabitants are natives of the place;

but such as from other countries or in other parts of this country

settle here for the advantage of good farms; for which I appeal to

any impartial inquiry, having myself examined into it critically in

several places.



From the marshes and low grounds being not able to travel without

many windings and indentures by reason of the creeks and waters, I

came up to the town of Malden, a noted market town situate at the

conflux or joining of two principal rivers in this county, the

Chelm or Chelmer, and the Blackwater, and where they enter into the

sea.  The channel, as I have noted, is called by the sailors Malden

Water, and is navigable up to the town, where by that means is a

great trade for carrying corn by water to London; the county of

Essex being (especially on all that side) a great corn county.



When I have said this I think I have done Malden justice, and said

all of it that there is to be said, unless I should run into the

old story of its antiquity, and tell you it was a Roman colony in

the time of Vespasian, and that it was called Camolodunum.  How the

Britons, under Queen Boadicea, in revenge for the Romans' ill-usage

of her - for indeed they used her majesty ill - they stripped her

naked and whipped her publicly through their streets for some

affront she had given them.  I say how for this she raised the

Britons round the country, overpowered, and cut in pieces the Tenth

Legion, killed above eighty thousand Romans, and destroyed the

colony; but was afterwards overthrown in a great battle, and sixty

thousand Britons slain.  I say, unless I should enter into this

story, I have nothing more to say of Malden, and, as for that

story, it is so fully related by Mr. Camden in his history of the

Romans in Britain at the beginning of his "Britannia," that I need

only refer the reader to it, and go on with my journey.



Being obliged to come thus far into the uplands, as above, I made

it my road to pass through Witham, a pleasant, well-situated market

town, in which, and in its neighbourhood, there are as many

gentlemen of good fortunes and families as I believe can be met

with in so narrow a compass in any of the three counties of which I

make this circuit.



In the town of Witham dwells the Lord Pasely, oldest son of the

Earl of Abercorn of Ireland (a branch of the noble family of

Hamilton, in Scotland).  His lordship has a small, but a neat,

well-built new house, and is finishing his gardens in such a manner

as few in that part of England will exceed them.



Nearer Chelmsford, hard by Boreham, lives the Lord Viscount

Barrington, who, though not born to the title, or estate, or name

which he now possesses, had the honour to be twice made heir to the

estates of gentlemen not at all related to him, at least, one of

them, as is very much to his honour, mentioned in his patent of

creation.  His name was Shute, his father a linendraper in London,

and served sheriff of the said city in very troublesome times.  He

changed the name of Shute for that of Barrington by an Act of

Parliament obtained for that purpose, and had the dignity of a

baron of the kingdom conferred on him by the favour of King George.

His lordship is a Dissenter, and seems to love retirement.  He was

a member of Parliament for the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.



On the other side of Witham, at Fauburn, an ancient mansion house,

built by the Romans, lives Mr. Bullock, whose father married the

daughter of that eminent citizen, Sir Josiah Child, of Wanstead, by

whom she had three sons; the eldest enjoys the estate, which is

considerable.



It is observable, that in this part of the country there are

several very considerable estates, purchased and now enjoyed by

citizens of London, merchants, and tradesmen, as Mr. Western, an

iron merchant, near Kelendon; Mr. Cresnor, a wholesale grocer, who

was, a little before he died, named for sheriff at Earl's Coln; Mr.

Olemus, a merchant at Braintree; Mr. Westcomb, near Malden; Sir

Thomas Webster at Copthall, near Waltham; and several others.



I mention this to observe how the present increase of wealth in the

City of London spreads itself into the country, and plants families

and fortunes, who in another age will equal the families of the

ancient gentry, who perhaps were brought out.  I shall take notice

of this in a general head, and when I have run through all the

counties, collect a list of the families of citizens and tradesmen

thus established in the several counties, especially round London.



The product of all this part of the country is corn, as that of the

marshy feeding grounds mentioned above is grass, where their chief

business is breeding of calves, which I need not say are the best

and fattest, and the largest veal in England, if not in the world;

and, as an instance, I ate part of a veal or calf, fed by the late

Sir Josiah Child at Wanstead, the loin of which weighed above

thirty pounds, and the flesh exceeding white and fat.



From hence I went on to Colchester.  The story of Kill-Dane, which

is told of the town of Kelvedon, three miles from Witham, namely,

that this is the place where the massacre of the Danes was begun by

the women, and that therefore it was called Kill-Dane; I say of it,

as we generally say of improbable news, it wants confirmation.  The

true name of the town is Kelvedon, and has been so for many hundred

years.  Neither does Mr. Camden, or any other writer I meet with

worth naming, insist on this piece of empty tradition.  The town is

commonly called Keldon.



Colchester is an ancient corporation.  The town is large, very

populous, the streets fair and beautiful, and though it may not

said to be finely built, yet there are abundance of very good and

well-built houses in it.  It still mourns in the ruins of a civil

war; during which, or rather after the heat of the war was over, it

suffered a severe siege, which, the garrison making a resolute

defence, was turned into a blockade, in which the garrison and

inhabitants also suffered the utmost extremity of hunger, and were

at last obliged to surrender at discretion, when their two chief

officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, were shot to

death under the castle wall.  The inhabitants had a tradition that

no grass would grow upon the spot where the blood of those two

gallant gentlemen was spilt, and they showed the place bare of

grass for many years; but whether for this reason I will not

affirm.  The story is now dropped, and the grass, I suppose, grows

there, as in other places.



However, the battered walls, the breaches in the turrets, and the

ruined churches, still remain, except that the church of St. Mary

(where they had the royal fort) is rebuilt; but the steeple, which

was two-thirds battered down, because the besieged had a large

culverin upon it that did much execution, remains still in that

condition.



There is another church which bears the marks of those times,

namely, on the south side of the town, in the way to the Hythe, of

which more hereafter.



The lines of contravallation, with the forts built by the

besiegers, and which surrounded the whole town, remain very visible

in many places; but the chief of them are demolished.



The River Colne, which passes through this town, compasses it on

the north and east sides, and served in those times for a complete

defence on those sides.  They have three bridges over it, one

called North Bridge, at the north gate, by which the road leads

into Suffolk; one called East Bridge, at the foot of the High

Street, over which lies the road to Harwich, and one at the Hythe,

as above.



The river is navigable within three miles of the town for ships of

large burthen; a little lower it may receive even a royal navy; and

up to that part called the Hythe, close to the houses, it is

navigable for hoys and small barques.  This Hythe is a long street,

passing from west to east, on the south side of the town.  At the

west end of it, there is a small intermission of the buildings, but

not much; and towards the river it is very populous (it may be

called the Wapping of Colchester).  There is one church in that

part of the town, a large quay by the river, and a good custom-

house.



The town may be said chiefly to subsist by the trade of making

bays, which is known over most of the trading parts of Europe by

the name of Colchester Bays, though indeed all the towns round

carry on the same trade - namely, Kelvedon, Witham, Coggeshall,

Braintree, Bocking, &c., and the whole county, large as it is, may

be said to be employed, and in part maintained, by the spinning of

wool for the bay trade of Colchester and its adjacent towns.  The

account of the siege, A.D. 1648, with a diary of the most

remarkable passages, are as follows, which I had from so good a

hand as that I have no reason to question its being a true

relation.







A Diary: Or, An Account Of The Siege And Blockade Of Colchester,

A.D. 1648.







On the 4th of June, we were alarmed in the town of Colchester that

the Lord Goring, the Lord Capel, and a body of two thousand of the

loyal party, who had been in arms in Kent, having left a great body

of an army in possession of Rochester Bridge, where they resolved

to fight the Lord Fairfax and the Parliament army, had given the

said General Fairfax the slip, and having passed the Thames at

Greenwich, were come to Stratford, and were advancing this way;

upon which news, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, Colonel Cook,

and several gentlemen of the loyal army, and all that had

commissions from the king, with a gallant appearance of gentlemen

volunteers, drew together from all parts of the country to join

with them.



The 8th, we were further informed that they were advanced to

Chelmsford, to New Hall House, and to Witham; and the 9th some of

the horse arrived in the town, taking possession of the gates, and

having engineers with them, told us that General Goring had

resolved to make this town his headquarters, and would cause it to

be well fortified.  They also caused the drums to beat for

volunteers; and a good number of the poor bay-weavers, and such-

like people, wanting employment, enlisted; so that they completed

Sir Charles Lucas's regiment, which was but thin, to near eight

hundred men.



On the 10th we had news that the Lord Fairfax, having beaten the

Royalists at Maidstone, and retaken Rochester, had passed the

Thames at Gravesend, though with great difficulty, and with some

loss, and was come to Horndon-on-the-Hill, in order to gain

Colchester before the Royalists; but that hearing Sir Charles Lucas

had prevented him, had ordered his rendezvous at Billerecay, and

intended to possess the pass at Malden on the 11th, where Sir

Thomas Honnywood, with the county-trained bands, was to be the same

day.



The same evening the Lord Goring, with all his forces, making about

five thousand six hundred men, horse and foot, came to Colchester,

and encamping without the suburbs, under command of the cannon of

St. Mary's fort, made disposition to fight the Parliament forces if

they came up.



The 12th, the Lord Goring came into Colchester, viewed the fort in

St. Mary's churchyard, ordered more cannon to be planted upon it,

posted two regiments in the suburbs without the head gate, let the

town know he would take them into his Majesty's protection, and

that he would fight the enemy in that situation.  The same evening

the Lord Fairfax, with a strong party of one thousand horse, came

to Lexden, at two small miles' distance, expecting the rest of his

army there the same night.



The Lord Goring brought in prisoners the same day, Sir William

Masham, and several other gentlemen of the county, who were secured

under a strong guard; which the Parliament hearing, ordered twenty

prisoners of the royal party to be singled out, declaring, that

they should be used in the same manner as the Lord Goring used Sir

William Masham, and the gentlemen prisoners with him.



On the 13th, early in the morning, our spies brought intelligence

that the Lord Fairfax, all his forces being come up to him, was

making dispositions for a march, resolving to attack the Royalists

in their camp; upon which, the Lord Goring drew all his forces

together, resolving to fight.  The engineers had offered the night

before to entrench his camp, and to draw a line round it in one

night's time, but his lordship declined it, and now there was no

time for it; whereupon the general, Lord Goring, drew up his army

in order of battle on both sides the road, the horse in the open

fields on the wings; the foot were drawn up, one regiment in the

road, one regiment on each side, and two regiments for reserve in

the suburb, just at the entrance of the town, with a regiment of

volunteers advanced as a forlorn hope, and a regiment of horse at

the head-gate, ready to support the reserve, as occasion should

require.



About nine in the morning we heard the enemy's drums beat a march,

and in half an hour more their first troops appeared on the higher

grounds towards Lexden.  Immediately the cannon from St. Mary's

fired upon them, and put some troops of horse into confusion, doing

great execution, which, they not being able to shun it, made them

quicken their pace, fall on, when our cannon were obliged to cease

firing, lest we should hurt our own troops as well as the enemy.

Soon after, their foot appeared, and our cannon saluted them in

like manner, and killed them a great many men.



Their first line of foot was led up by Colonel Barkstead, and

consisted of three regiments of foot, making about 1,700 men, and

these charged our regiment in the lane, commanded by Sir George

Lisle and Sir William Campion.  They fell on with great fury, and

were received with as much gallantry, and three times repulsed; nor

could they break in here, though the Lord Fairfax sent fresh men to

support them, till the Royalists' horse, oppressed with numbers on

the left, were obliged to retire, and at last to come full gallop

into the street, and so on into the town.  Nay, still the foot

stood firm, and the volunteers, being all gentlemen, kept their

ground with the greatest resolution; but the left wing being

routed, as above, Sir William Campion was obliged to make a front

to the left, and lining the hedge with his musketeers, made a stand

with a body of pikes against the enemy's horse, and prevented them

entering the lane.  Here that gallant gentleman was killed with a

carabine shot; and after a very gallant resistance, the horse on

the right being also overpowered, the word was given to retreat,

which, however, was done in such good order, the regiments of

reserve standing drawn up at the end of the street, ready to

receive the enemy's horse upon the points of their pikes, that the

royal troops came on in the openings between the regiments, and

entered the town with very little loss, and in very good order.



By this, however, those regiments of reserve were brought at last

to sustain the efforts of the enemy's whole army, till being

overpowered by numbers they were put into disorder, and forced to

get into the town in the best manner they could; by which means

near two hundred men were killed or made prisoners.



Encouraged by this success the enemy pushed on, supposing they

should enter the town pell-mell with the rest; nor did the

Royalists hinder them, but let good part of Barkstead's own

regiment enter the head-gate; but then sallying from St. Mary's

with a choice body of foot on their left, and the horse rallying in

the High Street, and charging them again in the front, they were

driven back quite into the street of the suburb, and most of those

that had so rashly entered were cut in pieces.



Thus they were repulsed at the south entrance into the town; and

though they attempted to storm three times after that with great

resolution, yet they were as often beaten back, and that with great

havoc of their men; and the cannon from the fort all the while did

execution upon those who stood drawn up to support them; so that at

last, seeing no good to be done, they retreated, having small joy

of their pretended victory.



They lost in this action Colonel Needham, who commanded a regiment

called the Tower Guards, and who fought very desperately; Captain

Cox, an old experienced horse officer, and several other officers

of note, with a great many private men, though, as they had the

field, they concealed their number, giving out that they lost but a

hundred, when we were assured they lost near a thousand men besides

the wounded.



They took some of our men prisoners, occasioned by the regiment of

Colonel Farr, and two more sustaining the shock of their whole

army, to secure the retreat of the main body, as above.



The 14th, the Lord Fairfax finding he was not able to carry the

town by storm, without the formality of a siege, took his

headquarters at Lexden, and sent to London and to Suffolk for more

forces; also he ordered the trained bands to be raised and posted

on the roads to prevent succours.  Notwithstanding which, divers

gentlemen, with some assistance of men and arms, found means to get

into the town.



The very same night they began to break ground, and particularly to

raise a fort between Colchester and Lexden, to cover the general's

quarter from the sallies from the town; for the Royalists having a

good body of horse, gave them no rest, but scoured the fields every

day, and falling all that were found straggling from their posts,

and by this means killed a great many.



The 17th, Sir Charles Lucas having been out with 1,200 horse, and

detaching parties toward the seaside, and towards Harwich, they

brought in a very great quantity of provisions, and abundance of

sheep and black cattle sufficient for the supply of the town for a

considerable time; and had not the Suffolk forces advanced over

Cataway Bridge to prevent it, a larger supply had been brought in

that way; for now it appeared plainly that the Lord Fairfax finding

the garrison strong and resolute, and that he was not in a

condition to reduce them by force, at least without the loss of

much blood, had resolved to turn his siege into a blockade, and

reduce them by hunger; their troops being also wanted to oppose

several other parties, who had, in several parts of the kingdom,

taken arms for the king's cause.



This same day General Fairfax sent in a trumpet to propose

exchanging prisoners, which the Lord Goring rejected, expecting a

reinforcement of troops, which were actually coming to him, and

were to be at Linton in Cambridgeshire as the next day.



The same day two ships brought in a quantity of corn and provisions

and fifty-six men from the shore of Kent with several gentlemen,

who all landed and came up to the town, and the greatest part of

the corn was with the utmost application unloaded the same night

into some hoys, which brought it up to the Hythe, being

apprehensive of the Parliament's ships which lay at Harwich, who

having intelligence of the said ships, came the next day into the

mouth of the river, and took the said two ships and what corn was

left in them.  The besieged sent out a party to help the ships, but

having no boats they could not assist them.



18th.  Sir Charles Lucas sent an answer about exchange of

prisoners, accepting the conditions offered, but the Parliament's

general returned that he would not treat with Sir Charles, for that

he (Sir Charles) being his prisoner upon his parole of honour, and

having appeared in arms contrary to the rules of war, had forfeited

his honour and faith, and was not capable of command or trust in

martial affairs.  To this Sir Charles sent back an answer, and his

excuse for his breach of his parole, but it was not accepted, nor

would the Lord Fairfax enter upon any treaty with him.



Upon this second message Sir William Masham and the Parliament

Committee and other gentlemen, who were prisoners in the town, sent

a message in writing under their hands to the Lord Fairfax,

entreating him to enter into a treaty for peace; but the Lord

Fairfax returned, he could take no notice of their request, as

supposing it forced from them under restraint; but that if the Lord

Goring desired peace, he might write to the Parliament, and he

would cause his messenger to have a safe conduct to carry his

letter.  There was a paper sent enclosed in this paper, signed

Capel, Norwich, Charles Lucas, but to that the general would return

no answer, because it was signed by Sir Charles for the reasons

above.



All this while the Lord Goring, finding the enemy strengthening

themselves, gave order for fortifying the town, and drawing lines

in several places to secure the entrance, as particularly without

the east bridge, and without the north gate and bridge, and to

plant more cannon upon the works; to which end some great guns were

brought in from some ships at Wivenhoe.



The same day, our men sallied out in three places, and attacked the

besiegers, first at their port, called Essex, then at their new

works, on the south of the town; a third party sallying at the east

bridge, brought in some booty from the Suffolk troops, having

killed several of their stragglers on the Harwich road.  They also

took a lieutenant of horse prisoner, and brought him into the town.



19th.  This day we had the unwelcome news that our friends at

Linton were defeated by the enemy, and Major Muschamp, a loyal

gentleman, killed.



The same night, our men gave the enemy alarm at their new Essex

fort, and thereby drew them out as if they would fight, till they

brought them within reach of the cannon of St. Mary's, and then our

men retiring, the great guns let fly among them, and made them run.

Our men shouted after them.  Several of them were killed on this

occasion, one shot having killed three horsemen in our fight.



20th.  We now found the enemy, in order to a perfect blockade,

resolved to draw a line of circumvallation round the town; having

received a train of forty pieces of heavy cannon from the Tower of

London.



This day the Parliament sent a messenger to their prisoners to know

how they fared, and how they were used; who returned word, that

they fared indifferent well, and were very civilly used, but that

provisions were scarce, and therefore dear.



This day a party of horse, with 300 foot, sallied out, and marched

as far as the fort on the Isle of Mersey, which they made a show of

attacking, to keep in the garrison.  Meanwhile the rest took a good

number of cattle from the country, which they brought safe into the

town, with five waggons laden with corn.  This was the last they

could bring in that way, the lines being soon finished on that

side.



This day the Lord Fairfax sent in a trumpet to the Earl of Norwich

and the Lord Goring, offering honourable conditions to them all,

allowing all the gentlemen their lives and arms, exemption from

plunder, and passes, if they desired to go beyond sea, and all the

private men pardon, and leave to go peaceably to their own

dwellings.  But the Lord Goring and the rest of the gentlemen

rejected it, and laughed at them, upon which the Lord Fairfax made

proclamation, that his men should give the private soldiers in

Colchester free leave to pass through their camp, and go where they

pleased without molestation, only leaving their arms, but that the

gentlemen should have no quarter.  This was a great loss to the

Royalists, for now the men foreseeing the great hardships they were

like to suffer, began to slip away, and the Lord Goring was obliged

to forbid any to desert on pain of present death, and to keep

parties of horse continually patrolling to prevent them;

notwithstanding which many got away.



21st.  The town desired the Lord Goring to give them leave to send

a message to Lord Fairfax, to desire they might have liberty to

carry on their trade and sell their bays and says, which Lord

Goring granted; but the enemy's general returned, that they should

have considered that before they let the Royalists into the town;

that to desire a free trade from a town besieged was never heard

of, or at least, was such a motion, as was never yet granted; that,

however, he would give the bay-makers leave to bring their bays and

says, and other goods, once a week, or oftener, if they desire it,

to Lexden Heath, where they should have a free market, and might

sell them or carry them back again, if not sold, as they found

occasion.



22nd.  The besieged sallied out in the night with a strong party,

and disturbed the enemy in their works, and partly ruined one of

their forts, called Ewer's Fort, where the besiegers were laying a

bridge over the River Colne.  Also they sallied again at east

bridge, and faced the Suffolk troops, who were now declared

enemies.  These brought in six-and-fifty good bullocks, and some

cows, and they took and killed several of the enemy.



23rd.  The besiegers began to fire with their cannon from Essex

Fort, and from Barkstead's Fort, which was built upon the Malden

road; and finding that the besieged had a party in Sir Harbottle

Grimston's house, called, "The Fryery," they fired at it with their

cannon, and battered it almost down, and then the soldiers set it

on fire.



This day upon the townsmen's treaty for the freedom of the bay

trade, the Lord Fairfax sent a second offer of conditions to the

besieged, being the same as before, only excepting Lord Goring,

Lord Capel, Sir George Lisle, and Sir Charles Lucas.



This day we had news in the town that the Suffolk forces were

advanced to assist the besiegers, and that they began a fort called

Fort Suffolk, on the north side of the town, to shut up the Suffolk

road towards Stratford.  This day the besieged sallied out at north

bridge, attacked the out-guards of the Suffolk men on Mile End

Heath, and drove them into their fort in the woods.



This day the Lord Fairfax sent a trumpet, complaining of chewed and

poisoned bullets being shot from the town, and threatening to give

no quarter if that practice was allowed; but Lord Goring returned

answer, with a protestation, that no such thing was done by his

order or consent.



24th.  They fired hard from their cannon against St. Mary's

steeple, on which was planted a large culverin, which annoyed them

even in the general's headquarters at Lexden.  One of the best

gunners the garrison had was killed with a cannon bullet.  This

night the besieged sallied towards Audly, on the Suffolk road, and

brought in some cattle.



25th.  Lord Capel sent a trumpet to the Parliament-General, but the

rogue ran away, and came not back, nor sent any answer; whether

they received his message or not, was not known.



26th.  This day having finished their new bridge, a party of their

troops passed that bridge, and took post on the hill over against

Mile End Church, where they built a fort, called Fothergall's Fort,

and another on the east side of the road, called Rainsbro's Fort,

so that the town was entirely shut in, on that side, and the

Royalists had no place free but over east bridge, which was

afterwards cut off by the enemy's bringing their line from the

Hythe within the river to the stone causeway leading to the east

bridge.



July 1st.  From the 26th to the 1st, the besiegers continued

finishing their works, and by the 2nd the whole town was shut in;

at which the besiegers gave a general salvo from their cannon at

all their forts; but the besieged gave them a return, for they

sallied out in the night, attacked Barkstead's fort, scarce

finished, with such fury, that they twice entered the work sword in

hand, killed most part of the defendants, and spoiled part of the

forts cast up; but fresh forces coming up, they retired with little

loss, bringing eight prisoners, and having slain, as they reported,

above 100.



On the second, Lord Fairfax offered exchange for Sir William Masham

in particular, and afterwards for other prisoners, but the Lord

Goring refused.



5th.  The besieged sallied with two regiments, supported by some

horse, at midnight; they were commanded by Sir George Lisle.  They

fell on with such fury, that the enemy were put into confusion,

their works at east bridge ruined, and two pieces of cannon taken,

Lieutenant Colonel Sambrook, and several other officers, were

killed, and our men retired into the town, bringing the captain,

two lieutenants, and about fifty men with them prisoners into the

town; but having no horse, we could not bring off the cannon, but

they spiked them, and made them unfit for service.



From this time to the 11th, the besieged sallied almost every

night, being encouraged by their successes, and they constantly cut

off some of the enemy, but not without loss also on their own side.



About this time we received by a spy the bad news of defeating the

king's friends almost in all parts of England, and particularly

several parties which had good wishes to our gentlemen, and

intended to relieve them.



Our batteries from St. Mary's Fort and steeple, and from the north

bridge, greatly annoyed them, and killed most of their gunners and

firemen.  One of the messengers who brought news to Lord Fairfax of

the defeat of one of the parties, in Kent, and the taking of Weymer

Castle, slipped into the town, and brought a letter to the Lord

Goring, and listed in the regiment of the Lord Capel's horse.



14th.  The besiegers attacked and took the Hythe Church, with a

small work the besieged had there, but the defenders retired in

time; some were taken prisoners in the church, but not in the fort;

Sir Charles Lucas's horse was attacked by a great body of the

besiegers; the besieged defended themselves with good resolution

for some time, but a hand-grenade thrown in by the assailants,

having fired the magazine, the house was blown up, and most of the

gallant defenders buried in the ruins.  This was a great blow to

the Royalists, for it was a very strong pass, and always well

guarded.



15th.  The Lord Fairfax sent offers of honourable conditions to the

soldiers of the garrison if they would surrender, or quit the

service; upon which the Lords Goring and Capel, and Sir Charles

Lucas, returned an answer signed by their hands, that it was not

honourable or agreeable to the usage of war to offer conditions

separately to the soldiers, exclusive of their officers, and

therefore civilly desired his lordship to send no more such

messages or proposals, or if he did, that he would not take it ill

if they hanged up the messenger.



This evening all the gentlemen volunteers, with all the horse of

the garrison, with Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Sir

Bernard Gascoigne at the head of them, resolved to break through

the enemy, and forcing a pass to advance into Suffolk by Nayland

Bridge.  To this purpose they passed the river near Middle Mill;

but their guides having misled them the enemy took the alarm; upon

which their guides, and some pioneers which they had with them to

open the hedges and level the banks, for their passing to Boxted,

all ran away, so the horse were obliged to retreat, the enemy

pretending to pursue, but thinking they had retreated by the north

bridge, they missed them; upon which being enraged, they fired the

suburbs without the bridge, and burned them quite down.



18th.  Some of the horse attempted to escape the same way, and had

the whole body been there as before, they had effected it; but

there being but two troops, they were obliged to retire.  Now the

town began to be greatly distressed, provisions failing, and the

townspeople, which were numerous, being very uneasy, and no way of

breaking through being found practicable, the gentlemen would have

joined in any attempt wherein they might die gallantly with their

swords in their hands, but nothing presented; they often sallied

and cut off many of the enemy, but their numbers were continually

supplied, and the besieged diminished; their horse also sunk and

became unfit for service, having very little hay, and no corn, and

at length they were forced to kill them for food; so that they

began to be in a very miserable condition, and the soldiers

deserted every day in great numbers, not being able to bear the

want of food, as being almost starved with hunger.



22nd.  The Lord Fairfax offered again an exchange of prisoners, but

the Lord Goring rejected it, because they refused conditions to the

chief gentlemen of the garrison.



During this time, two troops of the Royal Horse sallied out in the

night, resolving to break out or die: the first rode up full gallop

to the enemy's horse guards on the side of Malden road, and

exchanged their pistols with the advanced troops, and wheeling made

as if they would retire to the town; but finding they were not

immediately pursued, they wheeled about to the right, and passing

another guard at a distance, without being perfectly discovered,

they went clean off, and passing towards Tiptree Heath, and having

good guides, they made their escape towards Cambridgeshire, in

which length of way they found means to disperse without being

attacked, and went every man his own way as fate directed; nor did

we hear that many of them were taken: they were led, as we are

informed, by Sir Bernard Gascoigne.



Upon these attempts of the horse to break out, the enemy built a

small fort in the meadow right against the ford in the river at the

Middle Mill, and once set that mill on fire, but it was

extinguished without much damage; however, the fort prevented any

more attempts that way.



22nd.  The Parliament-General sent in a trumpet, to propose again

the exchange of prisoners, offering the Lord Capel's son for one,

and Mr. Ashburnham for Sir William Masham; but the Lord Capel, Lord

Goring, and the rest of the loyal gentlemen rejected it; and Lord

Capel, in particular, sent the Lord Fairfax word it was inhuman to

surprise his son, who was not in arms, and offer him to insult a

father's affection, but that he might murder his son if he pleased,

he would leave his blood to be revenged as Heaven should give

opportunity; and the Lord Goring sent word, that as they had

reduced the king's servants to eat horseflesh, the prisoners should

feed as they fed.



The enemy sent again to complain of the Royalists shooting poisoned

bullets, and sent two affidavits of it made by two deserters,

swearing it was done by the Lord Norwich's direction; the generals

in the town returned under all their hands that they never gave any

such command or direction; that they disowned the practice; and

that the fellows who swore it were perjured before in running from

their colours and the service of their king, and ought not to be

credited again; but they added, that for shooting rough-cast slugs

they must excuse them, as things stood with them at that time.



About this time, a porter in a soldier's habit got through the

enemy's leaguer, and passing their out-guards in the dark, got into

the town, and brought letters from London, assuring the Royalists

that there were so many strong parties up in arms for the king, and

in so many places, that they would be very suddenly relieved.  This

they caused to be read to the soldiers to encourage them; and

particularly it related to the rising of the Earl of Holland, and

the Duke of Buckingham, who with 500 horse were gotten together in

arms about Kingston in Surrey; but we had notice in a few days

after that they were defeated, and the Earl of Holland taken, who

was afterwards beheaded.



26th.  The enemy now began to batter the walls, and especially on

the west side, from St. Mary's towards the north gate; and we were

assured they intended a storm; on which the engineers were directed

to make trenches behind the walls where the breaches should be

made, that in case of a storm they might meet with a warm

reception.  Upon this, they gave over the design of storming.  The

Lord Goring finding that the enemy had set the suburbs on fire

right against the Hythe, ordered the remaining houses, which were

empty of inhabitants, from whence their musketeer fired against the

town, to be burned also.



31st.  A body of foot sallied out at midnight, to discover what the

enemy were doing at a place where they thought a new fort raising;

they fell in among the workmen, and put them to flight, cut in

pieces several of the guard, and brought in the officer who

commanded them prisoner.



August 2nd.  The town was now in a miserable condition: the

soldiers searched and rifled the houses of the inhabitants for

victuals; they had lived on horseflesh several weeks, and most of

that also was as lean as carrion, which not being well salted bred

wens; and this want of diet made the soldiers sickly, and many died

of fluxes, yet they boldly rejected all offers of surrender, unless

with safety to their offices.  However, several hundreds got out,

and either passed the enemy's guards, or surrendered to them and

took passes.



7th.  The townspeople became very uneasy to the soldiers, and the

mayor of the town, with the aldermen, waited upon the general,

desiring leave to send to the Lord Fairfax for leave to all the

inhabitants to come out of the town, that they might not perish, to

which the Lord Goring consented, but the Lord Fairfax refused them.



12th.  The rabble got together in a vast crowd about the Lord

Goring's quarters, clamouring for a surrender, and they did this

every evening, bringing women and children, who lay howling and

crying on the ground for bread; the soldiers beat off the men, but

the women and children would not stir, bidding the soldiers kill

them, saying they had rather be shot than be starved.



16th.  The general, moved by the cries and distress of the poor

inhabitants, sent out a trumpet to the Parliament-General,

demanding leave to send to the Prince, who was with a fleet of

nineteen men of war in the mouth of the Thames, offering to

surrender, if they were not relieved in twenty days.  The Lord

Fairfax refused it, and sent them word he would be in the town in

person, and visit them in less than twenty days, intimating that

they were preparing for a storm.  Some tart messages and answers

were exchanged on this occasion.  The Lord Goring sent word they

were willing, in compassion to the poor townspeople, and to save

that effusion of blood, to surrender upon honourable terms, but

that as for the storming them, which was threatened, they might

come on when they thought fit, for that they (the Royalists) were

ready for them.  This held to the 19th.



20th.  The Lord Fairfax returned what he said was his last answer,

and should be the last offer of mercy.  The conditions offered

were, that upon a peaceable surrender, all soldiers and officers

under the degree of a captain in commission should have their

lives, be exempted from plunder, and have passes to go to their

respective dwellings.  All the captains and superior officers, with

all the lords and gentlemen, as well in commission as volunteers,

to surrender prisoners at discretion, only that they should not be

plundered by the soldiers.



21st.  The generals rejected those offers; and when the people came

about them again for bread, set open one of the gates, and bid them

go out to the enemy, which a great many did willingly; upon which

the Lord Goring ordered all the rest that came about his door to be

turned out after them.  But when the people came to the Lord

Fairfax's camp the out-guards were ordered to fire at them and

drive them all back again to the gate, which the Lord Goring

seeing, he ordered them to be received in again.  And now, although

the generals and soldiers also were resolute to die with their

swords in their hands rather than yield, and had maturely resolved

to abide a storm, yet the Mayor and Aldermen having petitioned them

as well as the inhabitants, being wearied with the importunities of

the distressed people, and pitying the deplorable condition they

were reduced to, they agreed to enter upon a treaty, and

accordingly sent out some officers to the Lord Fairfax, the

Parliament-General, to treat, and with them was sent two gentlemen

of the prisoners upon their parole to return.



Upon the return of the said messengers with the Lord Fairfax's

terms, the Lord Goring, &c., sent out a letter declaring they would

die with their swords in their hands rather than yield without

quarter for life, and sent a paper of articles on which they were

willing to surrender.  But in the very interim of this treaty news

came that the Scots army, under Duke Hamilton, which was entered

into Lancashire, and was joined by the Royalists in that country,

making 21,000 men, were entirely defeated.  After this the Lord

Fairfax would not grant any abatement of articles - viz., to have

all above lieutenants surrender at mercy.



Upon this the Lord Goring and the General refused to submit again,

and proposed a general sally, and to break through or die, but

found upon preparing for it that the soldiers, who had their lives

offered them, declined it, fearing the gentlemen would escape, and

they should be left to the mercy of the Parliament soldiers; and

that upon this they began to mutiny and talk of surrendering the

town and their officers too.  Things being brought to this pass,

the Lords and General laid aside that design, and found themselves

obliged to submit; and so the town was surrendered the 28th of

August, 1648, upon conditions as follows:-





The Lords and gentlemen all prisoners at mercy.



The common soldiers had passes to go home to their several

dwellings, but without arms, and an oath not to serve against the

Parliament.



The town to be preserved from pillage, paying 14,000 pounds ready

money.





The same day a council of war being called about the prisoners of

war, it was resolved that the Lords should be left to the disposal

of the Parliament.  That Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and

Sir Marmaduke Gascoigne should be shot to death, and the other

officers prisoners to remain in custody till further order.



The two first of the three gentlemen were shot to death, and the

third respited.  Thus ended the siege of Colchester.



N.B. - Notwithstanding the number killed in the siege, and dead of

the flux, and other distempers occasioned by bad diet, which were

very many, and notwithstanding the number which deserted and

escaped in the time of their hardships, yet there remained at the

time of the surrender:



Earl of Norwich (Goring).

Lord Capell.

Lord Loughbro'.

11 Knights.

9 Colonels.

8 Lieut.-Colonels.

9 Majors.

30 Captains.

72 Lieutenants.

69 Ensigns.

183 Serjeants and Corporals.

3,067 Private Soldiers.

65 Servants to the Lords and General Officers and Gentlemen.

3,526 in all.





The town of Colchester has been supposed to contain about 40,000

people, including the out-villages which are within its liberty, of

which there are a great many - the liberty of the town being of a

great extent.  One sad testimony of the town being so populous is

that they buried upwards of 5,259 people in the plague year, 1665.

But the town was severely visited indeed, even more in proportion

than any of its neighbours, or than the City of London.



The government of the town is by a mayor, high steward, a recorder

or his deputy, eleven aldermen, a chamberlain, a town clerk,

assistants, and eighteen common councilmen.  Their high steward

(this year, 1722) is Sir Isaac Rebow, a gentleman of a good family

and known character, who has generally for above thirty years been

one of their representatives in Parliament.  He has a very good

house at the entrance in at the south, or head gate of the town,

where he has had the honour several times to lodge and entertain

the late King William of glorious memory in his returning from

Holland by way of Harwich to London.  Their recorder is Earl

Cowper, who has been twice Lord High Chancellor of England.  But

his lordship not residing in those parts has put in for his deputy,

- Price, Esq., barrister-at-law, and who dwells in the town.  There

are in Colchester eight churches besides those which are damaged,

and five meeting-houses, whereof two for Quakers, besides a Dutch

church and a French church.





Public Edifices are -





1.  Bay Hall, an ancient society kept up for ascertaining the

manufacture of bays, which are, or ought to be, all brought to this

hall to be viewed and sealed according to their goodness by the

masters; and to this practice has been owing the great reputation

of the Colchester bays in foreign markets, where to open the side

of a bale and show the seal has been enough to give the buyer a

character of the value of the goods without any further search; and

so far as they abate the integrity and exactness of their method,

which I am told of late is much omitted; I say, so far, that

reputation will certainly abate in the markets they go to, which

are principally in Portugal and Italy.  This corporation is

governed by a particular set of men who are called governors of the

Dutch Bay Hall.  And in the same building is the Dutch church.



2.  The guildhall of the town, called by them the moot hall, to

which is annexed the town gaol.



3.  The workhouse, being lately enlarged, and to which belongs a

corporation or a body of the inhabitants, consisting of sixty

persons incorporated by Act of Parliament Anno 1698 for taking care

of the poor.  They are incorporated by the name and title of the

governor, deputy governor, assistants, and guardians of the poor of

the town of Colchester.  They are in number eight-and-forty, to

whom are added the mayor and aldermen for the time being, who are

always guardians by the same charter.  These make the number of

sixty, as above.  There is also a grammar free-school, with a good

allowance to the master, who is chosen by the town.



4.  The castle of Colchester is now become only a monument showing

the antiquity of the place, it being built as the walls of the town

also are, with Roman bricks, and the Roman coins dug up here, and

ploughed up in the fields adjoining, confirm it.  The inhabitants

boast much that Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, first

Christian Emperor of the Romans, was born there, and it may be so

for aught we know.  I only observe what Mr. Camden says of the

Castle of Colchester, viz.: In the middle of this city stands a

castle ready to fall with age.



Though this castle has stood one hundred and twenty years from the

time Mr. Camden wrote that account, and it is not fallen yet, nor

will another hundred and twenty years, I believe, make it look one

jot the older.  And it was observable that in the late siege of

this town, a common shot, which the besiegers made at this old

castle, were so far from making it fall, that they made little or

no impression upon it; for which reason, it seems, and because the

garrison made no great use of it against the besiegers, they fired

no more at it.



There are two charity schools set up here, and carried on by a

generous subscription, with very good success.



The title of Colchester is in the family of Earl Rivers, and the

eldest son of that family is called Lord Colchester, though as I

understand, the title is not settled by the creation to the eldest

son till he enjoys the title of earl with it, but that the other is

by the courtesy of England; however, this I take AD REFERENDUM.



From Colchester I took another step down to the coast; the land

running out a great way into the sea, south and south-east makes

that promontory of land called the Naze, and well known to seamen

using the northern trade.  Here one sees a sea open as an ocean

without any opposite shore, though it be no more than the mouth of

the Thames.  This point called the Naze, and the north-east point

of Kent, near Margate, called the North Foreland, making what they

call the mouth of the river and the port of London, though it be

here above sixty miles over.



At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stone in

great quantities; and there are several large works called copperas

houses, where they make it with great expense.



On this promontory is a new mark erected by the Trinity House men,

and at the public expense, being a round brick tower, near eighty

feet high.  The sea gains so much upon the land here by the

continual winds at south-west, that within the memory of some of

the inhabitants there they have lost above thirty acres of land in

one place.



From hence we go back into the county about four miles, because of

the creeks which lie between; and then turning east again come to

Harwich, on the utmost eastern point of this large country.



Harwich is a town so well known and so perfectly described by many

writers, I need say little of it.  It is strong by situation, and

may be made more so by art.  But it is many years since the

Government of England have had any occasion to fortify towns to the

landward; it is enough that the harbour or road, which is one of

the best and securest in England, is covered at the entrance by a

strong fort and a battery of guns to the seaward, just as at

Tilbury, and which sufficiently defend the mouth of the river.  And

there is a particular felicity in this fortification, viz., that

though the entrance or opening of the river into the sea is very

wide, especially at high-water, at least two miles, if not three

over; yet the Channel, which is deep, and in which the ships must

keep and come to the harbour, is narrow, and lies only on the side

of the fort, so that all the ships which come in or go out must

come close under the guns of the fort - that is to say, under the

command of their shot.



The fort is on the Suffolk side of the bay or entrance, but stands

so far into the sea upon the point of a sand or shoal, which runs

out toward the Essex side, as it were, laps over the mouth of that

haven like a blind to it; and our surveyors of the country affirm

it to be in the county of Essex.  The making this place, which was

formerly no other than a sand in the sea, solid enough for the

foundation of so good a fortification, has not been done but by

many years' labour, often repairs, and an infinite expense of

money, but it is now so firm that nothing of storms and high tides,

or such things as make the sea dangerous to these kind of works,

can affect it.



The harbour is of a vast extent; for, as two rivers empty

themselves here, viz., Stour from Manningtree and the Orwell from

Ipswich, the channels of both are large and deep; and safe for all

weathers; so where they join they make a large bay or road able to

receive the biggest ships, and the greatest number that ever the

world saw together; I mean ships of war.  In the old Dutch war

great use has been made of this harbour; and I have known that

there has been one hundred sail of men-of-war and their attendants

and between three and four hundred sail of collier ships all in

this harbour at a time, and yet none of them crowding or riding in

danger of one another.



Harwich is known for being the port where the packet boats, between

England and Holland, go out and come in.  The inhabitants are far

from being famed for good usage to strangers, but, on the contrary,

are blamed for being extravagant in their reckonings in the public-

houses, which has not a little encouraged the setting up of sloops,

which they now call passage boats, to Holland, to go directly from

the River Thames; this, though it may be something the longer

passage, yet as they are said to be more obliging to passengers and

more reasonable in the expense, and, as some say, also, the vessels

are better sea boats, has been the reason why so many passengers do

not go or come by the way of Harwich as formerly were wont to do;

insomuch that the stage coaches between this place and London,

which ordinarily went twice or three times a week, are now entirely

laid down, and the passengers are left to hire coaches on purpose,

take post-horses, or hire horses to Colchester, as they find most

convenient.



The account of a petrifying quality in the earth here, though some

will have it to be in the water of a spring hard by, is very

strange.  They boast that their town is walled and their streets

paved with clay, and yet that one is as strong and the other as

clean as those that are built or paved with stone.  The fact is

indeed true, for there is a sort of clay in the cliff, between the

town and the Beacon Hill adjoining, which, when it falls down into

the sea, where it is beaten with the waves and the weather, turns

gradually into stone.  But the chief reason assigned is from the

water of a certain spring or well, which, rising in the said cliff,

runs down into the sea among those pieces of clay, and petrifies

them as it runs; and the force of the sea often stirring, and

perhaps turning, the lumps of clay, when storms of wind may give

force enough to the water, causes them to harden everywhere alike;

otherwise those which were not quite sunk in the water of the

spring would be petrified but in part.  These stones are gathered

up to pave the streets and build the houses, and are indeed very

hard.  It is also remarkable that some of them taken up before they

are thoroughly petrified will, upon breaking them, appear to be

hard as a stone without and soft as clay in the middle; whereas

others that have lain a due time shall be thorough stone to the

centre, and as exceeding hard within as without.  The same spring

is said to turn wood into iron.  But this I take to be no more or

less than the quality, which, as I mentioned of the shore at the

Naze, is found to be in much of the stone all along this shore,

viz., of the copperas kind; and it is certain that the copperas

stone (so called) is found in all that cliff, and even where the

water of this spring has run; and I presume that those who call the

hardened pieces of wood, which they take out of this well by the

name of iron, never tried the quality of it with the fire or

hammer; if they had, perhaps they would have given some other

account of it.



On the promontory of land which they call Beacon Hill and which

lies beyond or behind the town towards the sea, there is a

lighthouse to give the ships directions in their sailing by as well

as their coming into the harbour in the night.  I shall take notice

of these again all together when I come to speak of the Society of

Trinity House, as they are called, by whom they are all directed

upon this coast.



This town was erected into a marquisate in honour of the truly

glorious family of Schomberg, the eldest son of Duke Schomberg, who

landed with King William, being styled Marquis of Harwich; but that

family (in England, at least) being extinct the title dies also.



Harwich is a town of hurry and business, not much of gaiety and

pleasure; yet the inhabitants seem warm in their nests, and some of

them are very wealthy.  There are not many (if any) gentlemen or

families of note either in the town or very near it.  They send two

members to Parliament; the present are Sir Peter Parker and

Humphrey Parsons, Esq.



And now being at the extremity of the county of Essex, of which I

have given you some view as to that side next the sea only, I shall

break off this part of my letter by telling you that I will take

the towns which lie more towards the centre of the county, in my

return by the north and west part only, that I may give you a few

hints of some towns which were near me in my route this way, and of

which being so well known there is but little to say.



On the road from London to Colchester, before I came into it at

Witham, lie four good market towns at equal distance from one

another, namely, Romford, noted for two markets, viz., one for

calves and hogs, the other for corn and other provisions, most, if

not all, bought up for London market.  At the farther end of the

town, in the middle of a stately park, stood Guldy Hall, vulgarly

Giddy Hall, an ancient seat of one Coke, sometime Lord Mayor of

London, but forfeited on some occasion to the Crown.  It is since

pulled down to the ground, and there now stands a noble stately

fabric or mansion house, built upon the spot by Sir John Eyles, a

wealthy merchant of London, and chosen Sub-Governor of the South

Sea Company immediately after the ruin of the former Sub-Governor

and Directors, whose overthrow makes the history of these times

famous.



Brentwood and Ingatestone, and even Chelmsford itself, have very

little to be said of them, but that they are large thoroughfare

towns, full of good inns, and chiefly maintained by the excessive

multitude of carriers and passengers which are constantly passing

this way to London with droves of cattle, provisions, and

manufactures for London.



The last of these towns is indeed the county town, where the county

gaol is kept, and where the assizes are very often held; it stands

on the conflux of two rivers - the Chelmer, whence the town is

called, and the Cann.



At Lees, or Lee's Priory, as some call it, is to be seen an ancient

house in the middle of a beautiful park, formerly the seat of the

late Duke of Manchester, but since the death of the duke it is sold

to the Duchess Dowager of Buckinghamshire, the present Duke of

Manchester retiring to his ancient family seat at Kimbolton in

Huntingdonshire, it being a much finer residence.  His grace is

lately married to a daughter of the Duke of Montagu by a branch of

the house of Marlborough.



Four market towns fill up the rest of this part of the country -

Dunmow, Braintree, Thaxted, and Coggeshall - all noted for the

manufacture of bays, as above, and for very little else, except I

shall make the ladies laugh at the famous old story of the Flitch

of Bacon at Dunmow, which is this:



One Robert Fitzwalter, a powerful baron in this county in the time

of Henry III., on some merry occasion, which is not preserved in

the rest of the story, instituted a custom in the priory here: That

whatever married man did not repent of his being married, or

quarrel or differ and dispute with his wife within a year and a day

after his marriage, and would swear to the truth of it, kneeling

upon two hard pointed stones in the churchyard, which stones he

caused to be set up in the Priory churchyard for that purpose, the

prior and convent, and as many of the town as would, to be present,

such person should have a flitch of bacon.



I do not remember to have read that any one ever came to demand it;

nor do the people of the place pretend to say, of their own

knowledge, that they remember any that did so.  A long time ago

several did demand it, as they say, but they know not who; neither

is there any record of it, nor do they tell us, if it were now to

be demanded, who is obliged to deliver the flitch of bacon, the

priory being dissolved and gone.



The forest of Epping and Hainault spreads a great part of this

country still.  I shall speak again of the former in my return from

this circuit.  Formerly, it is thought, these two forests took up

all the west and south part of the county; but particularly we are

assured, that it reached to the River Chelmer, and into Dengy

Hundred, and from thence again west to Epping and Waltham, where it

continues to be a forest still.



Probably this forest of Epping has been a wild or forest ever since

this island was inhabited, and may show us, in some parts of it,

where enclosures and tillage has not broken in upon it, what the

face of this island was before the Romans' time; that is to say,

before their landing in Britain.



The constitution of this forest is best seen, I mean as to the

antiquity of it, by the merry grant of it from Edward the Confessor

before the Norman Conquest to Randolph Peperking, one of his

favourites, who was after called Peverell, and whose name remains

still in several villages in this county; as particularly that of

Hatfield Peverell, in the road from Chelmsford to Witham, which is

supposed to be originally a park, which they called a field in

those days; and Hartfield may be as much as to say a park for doer;

for the stags were in those days called harts, so that this was

neither more nor less than Randolph Peperking's Hartfield - that is

to say, Ralph Peverell's deer-park.



N.B. - This Ralph Randolph, or Ralph Peverell (call him as you

please), had, it seems, a most beautiful lady to his wife, who was

daughter of Ingelrick, one of Edward the Confessor's noblemen.  He

had two sons by her - William Peverell, a famed soldier, and lord

or governor of Dover Castle, which he surrendered to William the

Conqueror, after the battle in Sussex, and Pain Peverell, his

youngest, who was lord of Cambridge.  When the eldest son delivered

up the castle, the lady, his mother, above named, who was the

celebrated beauty of the age, was it seems there, and the Conqueror

fell in love with her, and whether by force or by consent, took her

away, and she became his mistress, or what else you please to call

it.  By her he had a son, who was called William, after the

Conqueror's Christian name, but retained the name of Peverell, and

was afterwards created by the Conqueror lord of Nottingham.



This lady afterwards, as is supposed, by way of penance for her

yielding to the Conqueror, founded a nunnery at the village of

Hatfield Peverell, mentioned above, and there she lies buried in

the chapel of it, which is now the parish church, where her memory

is preserved by a tombstone under one of the windows.



Thus we have several towns, where any ancient parks have been

placed, called by the name of Hatfield on that very account.  As

Hatfield Broad Oak in this county, Bishop's Hatfield in

Hertfordshire, and several others.



But I return to King Edward's merry way, as I call it, of granting

this forest to this Ralph Peperking, which I find in the ancient

records, in the very words it was passed in, as follows.  Take my

explanations with it for the sake of those that are not used to the

ancient English:





The Grant in Old English.



IChe EDWARD Koning,

Have given of my Forrest the kepen of the Hundred of CHELMER and

DANCING.

To RANDOLPH PEPERKING,

And to his kindling.

With Heorte and Hind, Doe and Bocke,

Hare and Fox, Cat and Brock,

Wild Fowle with his Flock;

Patrich, Pheasant Hen, and Pheasant Cock,

With green and wild Stub and Stock,

To kepen and to yemen with all her might.

Both by Day, and eke by Night;

And Hounds for to hold,

Good and Swift and Bold:

Four Greyhound and six Raches,

For Hare and Fox, and Wild Cattes,

And therefore Iche made him my Book.

Witness the Bishop of WOLSTON.

And Booke ylrede many on,

And SWEYNE of ESSEX, our Brother,

And taken him many other

And our steward HOWLEIN,

That BY SOUGHT me for him.





The Explanation in Modern English





I Edward the king,

Have made ranger of my forest of Chelmsford hundred and Deering

hundred,

Ralph Peverell, for him and his heirs for ever;

With both the red and fallow deer.

Hare and fox, otter and badger;

Wild fowl of all sorts,

Partridges and pheasants,

Timber and underwood roots and tops;

With power to preserve the forest,

And watch it against deer-stealers and others:

With a right to keep hounds of all sorts,

Four greyhounds and six terriers,

Harriers and foxhounds, and other hounds.

And to this end I have registered this my grant in the crown rolls

or books;

To which the bishop has set his hand as a witness for any one to

read.

Also signed by the king's brother (or, as some think, the

Chancellor Sweyn, then Earl or Count of Essex).

He might call such other witnesses to sign as he thought fit.

Also the king's high steward was a witness, at whose request this

grant was obtained of the king.





There are many gentlemen's seats on this side the country, and a

great assembly set up at New Hall, near this town, much resorted to

by the neighbouring gentry.  I shall next proceed to the county of

Suffolk, as my first design directed me to do.



From Harwich, therefore, having a mind to view the harbour, I sent

my horses round by Manningtree, where there is a timber bridge over

the Stour, called Cataway Bridge, and took a boat up the River

Orwell for Ipswich.  A traveller will hardly understand me,

especially a seaman, when I speak of the River Stour and the River

Orwell at Harwich, for they know them by no other names than those

of Manningtree water and Ipswich water; so while I am on salt

water, I must speak as those who use the sea may understand me, and

when I am up in the country among the inland towns again, I shall

call them out of their names no more.



It is twelve miles from Harwich up the water to Ipswich.  Before I

come to the town, I must say something of it, because speaking of

the river requires it.  In former times, that is to say, since the

writer of this remembers the place very well, and particularly just

before the late Dutch wars, Ipswich was a town of very good

business; particularly it was the greatest town in England for

large colliers or coal-ships employed between Newcastle and London.

Also they built the biggest ships and the best, for the said

fetching of coals of any that were employed in that trade.  They

built, also, there so prodigious strong, that it was an ordinary

thing for an Ipswich collier, if no disaster happened to him, to

reign (as seamen call it) forty or fifty years, and more.



In the town of Ipswich the masters of these ships generally dwelt,

and there were, as they then told me, above a hundred sail of them,

belonging to the town at one time, the least of which carried

fifteen score, as they compute it, that is, 300 chaldron of coals;

this was about the year 1668 (when I first knew the place).  This

made the town be at that time so populous, for those masters, as

they had good ships at sea, so they had large families who lived

plentifully, and in very good houses in the town, and several

streets were chiefly inhabited by such.



The loss or decay of this trade accounts for the present pretended

decay of the town of Ipswich, of which I shall speak more

presently.  The ships wore out, the masters died off, the trade

took a new turn; Dutch flyboats taken in the war, and made free

ships by Act of Parliament, thrust themselves into the coal-trade

for the interest of the captors, such as the Yarmouth and London

merchants, and others; and the Ipswich men dropped gradually out of

it, being discouraged by those Dutch flyboats.  These Dutch

vessels, which cost nothing but the caption, were bought cheap,

carried great burthens, and the Ipswich building fell off for want

of price, and so the trade decayed, and the town with it.  I

believe this will be owned for the true beginning of their decay,

if I must allow it to be called a decay.



But to return to my passage up the river.  In the winter-time those

great collier ships, above-mentioned, are always laid up, as they

call it; that is to say, the coal trade abates at London, the

citizens are generally furnished, their stores taken in, and the

demand is over; so that the great ships, the northern seas and

coast being also dangerous, the nights long, and the voyage

hazardous, go to sea no more, but lie by, the ships are unrigged,

the sails, etc., carried ashore, the top-masts struck, and they

ride moored in the river, under the advantages and security of

sound ground, and a high woody shore, where they lie as safe as in

a wet dock; and it was a very agreeable sight to see, perhaps two

hundred sail of ships, of all sizes, lie in that posture every

winter.  All this while, which was usually from Michaelmas to Lady

Day, the masters lived calm and secure with their families in

Ipswich; and enjoying plentifully, what in the summer they got

laboriously at sea, and this made the town of Ipswich very populous

in the winter; for as the masters, so most of the men, especially

their mates, boatswains, carpenters, etc., were of the same place,

and lived in their proportions, just as the masters did; so that in

the winter there might be perhaps a thousand men in the town more

than in the summer, and perhaps a greater number.



To justify what I advance here, that this town was formerly very

full of people, I ask leave to refer to the account of Mr. Camden,

and what it was in his time.  His words are these:- "Ipswich has a

commodious harbour, has been fortified with a ditch and rampart,

has a great trade, and is very populous, being adorned with

fourteen churches, and large private buildings."  This confirms

what I have mentioned of the former state of this town; but the

present state is my proper work; I therefore return to my voyage up

the river.



The sight of these ships thus laid up in the river, as I have said,

was very agreeable to me in my passage from Harwich, about five and

thirty years before the present journey; and it was in its

proportion equally melancholy to hear that there were now scarce

forty sail of good colliers that belonged to the whole town.



In a creek in this river, called Lavington Creek, we saw at low

water such shoals, or hills rather, of mussels, that great boats

might have loaded with them, and no miss have been made of them.

Near this creek, Sir Samuel Barnadiston had a very fine seat, as,

also, a decoy for wild ducks, and a very noble estate; but it is

divided into many branches since the death of the ancient

possessor.  But I proceed to the town, which is the first in the

county of Suffolk of any note this way.



Ipswich is seated, at the distance of twelve miles from Harwich,

upon the edge of the river, which, taking a short turn to the west,

the town forms, there, a kind of semicircle, or half moon, upon the

bank of the river.  It is very remarkable, that though ships of 500

ton may, upon a spring tide, come up very near this town, and many

ships of that burthen have been built there, yet the river is not

navigable any farther than the town itself, or but very little; no,

not for the smallest beats; nor does the tide, which rises

sometimes thirteen or fourteen feet, and gives them twenty-four

feet water very near the town, flow much farther up the river than

the town, or not so much as to make it worth speaking of.



He took little notice of the town, or at least of that part of

Ipswich, who published in his wild observations on it that ships of

200 ton are built there.  I affirm, that I have seen a ship of 400

ton launched at the building-yard, close to the town; and I appeal

to the Ipswich colliers (those few that remain) belonging to this

town, if several of them carrying seventeen score of coals, which

must be upward of 400 ton, have not formerly been built here; but

superficial observers must be superficial writers, if they write at

all; and to this day, at John's Ness, within a mile and a half of

the town itself, ships of any burthen may be built and launched

even at neap tides.



I am much mistaken, too, if since the Revolution some very good

ships have not been built at this town, and particularly the

MELFORD or MILFORD galley, a ship of forty guns; as the GREYHOUND

frigate, a man-of-war of thirty-six to forty guns, was at John's

Ness.  But what is this towards lessening the town of Ipswich, any

more than it would be to say, they do not build men-of-war, or East

India ships, or ships of five hundred ton burden at St. Catherines,

or at Battle Bridge in the Thames? when we know that a mile or two

lower, viz., at Radcliffe, Limehouse, or Deptford, they build ships

of a thousand ton, and might build first-rate men-of-war too, if

there was occasion; and the like might be done in this river of

Ipswich, within about two or three miles of the town; so that it

would not be at all an out-of-the-way speaking to say, such a ship

was built at Ipswich, any more than it is to say, as they do, that

the ROYAL PRINCE, the great ship lately built for the South Sea

Company, was London built, because she was built at Limehouse.



And why then is not Ipswich capable of building and receiving the

greatest ships in the navy, seeing they may be built and brought up

again laden, within a mile and half of the town?



But the neighbourhood of London, which sucks the vitals of trade in

this island to itself, is the chief reason of any decay of business

in this place; and I shall, in the course of these observations,

hint at it, where many good seaports and large towns, though

farther off than Ipswich, and as well fitted for commerce, are yet

swallowed up by the immense indraft of trade to the City of London;

and more decayed beyond all comparison than Ipswich is supposed to

be: as Southampton, Weymouth, Dartmouth, and several others which I

shall speak to in their order; and if it be otherwise at this time,

with some other towns, which are lately increased in trade and

navigation, wealth, and people, while their neighbours decay, it is

because they have some particular trade, or accident to trade,

which is a kind of nostrum to them, inseparable to the place, and

which fixes there by the nature of the thing; as the herring-

fishery to Yarmouth; the coal trade to Newcastle; the Leeds

clothing trade; the export of butter and lead, and the great corn

trade for Holland, is to Hull; the Virginia and West India trade at

Liverpool; the Irish trade at Bristol, and the like.  Thus the war

has brought a flux of business and people, and consequently of

wealth, to several places, as well as to Portsmouth, Chatham,

Plymouth, Falmouth, and others; and were any wars like those, to

continue twenty years with the Dutch, or any nation whose fleets

lay that way, as the Dutch do, it would be the like perhaps at

Ipswich in a few years, and at other places on the same coast.



But at this present time an occasion offers to speak in favour of

this port; namely, the Greenland fishery, lately proposed to be

carried on by the South Sea Company.  On which account I may freely

advance this, without any compliment to the town of Ipswich, no

place in Britain is equally qualified like Ipswich; whether we

respect the cheapness of building and fitting out their ships and

shallops; also furnishing, victualling, and providing them with all

kinds of stores; convenience for laying up the ships after the

voyage, room for erecting their magazines, warehouses, rope walks,

cooperages, etc., on the easiest terms; and especially for the

noisome cookery, which attends the boiling their blubber, which may

be on this river (as it ought to be) remote from any places of

resort.  Then their nearness to the market for the oil when it is

made, and which, above all, ought to be the chief thing considered

in that trade, the easiness of their putting out to sea when they

begin their voyage, in which the same wind that carries them from

the mouth of the haven, is fair to the very seas of Greenland.



I could say much more to this point if it were needful, and in few

words could easily prove, that Ipswich must have the preference of

all the port towns of Britain, for being the best centre of the

Greenland trade, if ever that trade fall into the management of

such a people as perfectly understand, and have a due honest regard

to its being managed with the best husbandry, and to the prosperity

of the undertaking in general.  But whether we shall ever arrive at

so happy a time as to recover so useful a trade to our country,

which our ancestors had the honour to be the first undertakers of,

and which has been lost only through the indolence of others, and

the increasing vigilance of our neighbours, that is not my business

here to dispute.



What I have said is only to let the world see what improvement this

town and port is capable of; I cannot think but that Providence,

which made nothing in vain, cannot have reserved so useful, so

convenient a port to lie vacant in the world, but that the time

will some time or other come (especially considering the improving

temper of the present age) when some peculiar beneficial business

may be found out, to make the port of Ipswich as useful to the

world, and the town as flourishing, as Nature has made it proper

and capable to be.



As for the town, it is true, it is but thinly inhabited, in

comparison of the extent of it; but to say there are hardly any

people to be seen there, is far from being true in fact; and

whoever thinks fit to look into the churches and meeting-houses on

a Sunday, or other public days, will find there are very great

numbers of people there.  Or if he thinks fit to view the market,

and see how the large shambles, called Cardinal Wolsey's Butchery,

are furnished with meat, and the rest of the market stocked with

other provisions, must acknowledge that it is not for a few people

that all those things are provided.  A person very curious, and on

whose veracity I think I may depend, going through the market in

this town, told me, that he reckoned upwards of six hundred country

people on horseback and on foot, with baskets and other carriage,

who had all of them brought something or other to town to sell,

besides the butchers, and what came in carts and waggons.



It happened to be my lot to be once at this town at the time when a

very fine new ship, which was built there for some merchants of

London, was to be launched; and if I may give my guess at the

numbers of people which appeared on the shore, in the houses, and

on the river, I believe I am much within compass if I say there

were 20,000 people to see it; but this is only a guess, or they

might come a great way to see the sight, or the town may be

declined farther since that.  But a view of the town is one of the

surest rules for a gross estimate.



It is true here is no settled manufacture.  The French refugees

when they first came over to England began a little to take to this

place, and some merchants attempted to set up a linen manufacture

in their favour; but it has not met with so much success as was

expected, and at present I find very little of it.  The poor people

are, however, employed, as they are all over these counties, in

spinning wool for other towns where manufactures are settled.



The country round Ipswich, as are all the counties so near the

coast, is applied chiefly to corn, of which a very great quantity

is continually shipped off for London; and sometimes they load corn

here for Holland, especially if the market abroad is encouraging.

They have twelve parish churches in this town, with three or four

meetings; but there are not so many Quakers here as at Colchester,

and no Anabaptists or Antipoedo Baptists, that I could hear of - at

least, there is no meeting-house of that denomination.  There is

one meeting-house for the Presbyterians, one for the Independents

and one for the Quakers; the first is as large and as fine a

building of that kind as most on this side of England, and the

inside the best finished of any I have seen, London not excepted;

that for the Independents is a handsome new-built building, but not

so gay or so large as the other.



There is a great deal of very good company in this town, and though

there are not so many of the gentry here as at Bury, yet there are

more here than in any other town in the county; and I observed

particularly that the company you meet with here are generally

persons well informed of the world, and who have something very

solid and entertaining in their society.  This may happen, perhaps,

by their frequent conversing with those who have been abroad, and

by their having a remnant of gentlemen and masters of ships among

them who have seen more of the world than the people of an inland

town are likely to have seen.  I take this town to be one of the

most agreeable places in England for families who have lived well,

but may have suffered in our late calamities of stocks and bubbles,

to retreat to, where they may live within their own compass; and

several things indeed recommend it to such:-



1.  Good houses at very easy rents.



2.  An airy, clean, and well-governed town.



3.  Very agreeable and improving company almost of every kind.



4.  A wonderful plenty of all manner of provisions, whether flesh

or fish, and very good of the kind.



5.  Those provisions very cheap, so that a family may live cheaper

here than in any town in England of its bigness within such a small

distance from London.



6.  Easy passage to London, either by land or water, the coach

going through to London in a day.





The Lord Viscount Hereford has a very fine seat and park in this

town; the house indeed is old built, but very commodious; it is

called Christ Church, having been, as it is said, a priory or

religious house in former times.  The green and park is a great

addition to the pleasantness of this town, the inhabitants being

allowed to divert themselves there with walking, bowling, etc.



The large spire steeple, which formerly stood upon that they call

the tower church, was blown down by a great storm of wind many

years ago, and in its a fall did much damage to the church.



The government of this town is by two bailiffs, as at Yarmouth.

Mr. Camden says they are chosen out of twelve burgesses called

portmen, and two justices out of twenty-four more.  There has been

lately a very great struggle between the two parties for the choice

of these two magistrates, which had this amicable conclusion -

namely, that they chose one of either side; so that neither party

having the victory, it is to be hoped it may be a means to allay

the heats and unneighbourly feuds which such things breed in towns

so large as this is.  They send two members to Parliament, whereof

those at this time are Sir William Thompson, Recorder of London,

and Colonel Negus, Deputy Master of the Horse to the king.



There are some things very curious to be seen here, however some

superficial writers have been ignorant of them.  Dr. Beeston, an

eminent physician, began a few years ago a physic garden adjoining

to his house in this town; and as he is particularly curious, and,

as I was told, exquisitely skilled in botanic knowledge, so he has

been not only very diligent, but successful too, in making a

collection of rare and exotic plants, such as are scarce to be

equalled in England.



One Mr. White, a surgeon, resides also in this town.  But before I

speak of this gentleman, I must observe that I say nothing from

personal knowledge; though if I did, I have too good an opinion of

his sense to believe he would be pleased with being flattered or

complimented in print.  But I must be true to matter of fact.  This

gentleman has begun a collection or chamber of rarities, and with

good success too.  I acknowledge I had not the opportunity of

seeing them; but I was told there are some things very curious in

it, as particularly a sea-horse carefully preserved, and perfect in

all its parts; two Roman urns full of ashes of human bodies, and

supposed to be above 1,700 years old; besides a great many valuable

medals and ancient coins.  My friend who gave me this account, and

of whom I think I may say he speaks without bias, mentions this

gentleman, Mr. White, with some warmth as a very valuable person in

his particular employ of a surgeon.  I only repeat his words.  "Mr.

White," says he, "to whom the whole town and country are greatly

indebted and obliged to pray for his life, is our most skilful

surgeon."  These, I say, are his own words, and I add nothing to

them but this, that it is happy for a town to have such a surgeon,

as it is for a surgeon to have such a character.



The country round Ipswich, as if qualified on purpose to

accommodate the town for building of ships, is an inexhaustible

store-house of timber, of which, now their trade of building ships

is abated, they send very great quantities to the king's building-

yards at Chatham, which by water is so little a way that they often

run to it from the mouth of the river at Harwich in one tide.



From Ipswich I took a turn into the country to Hadleigh,

principally to satisfy my curiosity and see the place where that

famous martyr and pattern of charity and religious zeal in Queen

Mary's time, Dr. Rowland Taylor, was put to death.  The

inhabitants, who have a wonderful veneration for his memory, show

the very place where the stake which he was bound to was set up,

and they have put a stone upon it which nobody will remove; but it

is a more lasting monument to him that he lives in the hearts of

the people - I say more lasting than a tomb of marble would be, for

the memory of that good man will certainly never be out of the poor

people's minds as long as this island shall retain the Protestant

religion among them.  How long that may be, as things are going,

and if the detestable conspiracy of the Papists now on foot should

succeed, I will not pretend to say.



A little to the left is Sudbury, which stands upon the River Stour,

mentioned above - a river which parts the counties of Suffolk and

Essex, and which is within these few years made navigable to this

town, though the navigation does not, it seems, answer the charge,

at least not to advantage.



I know nothing for which this town is remarkable, except for being

very populous and very poor.  They have a great manufacture of says

and perpetuanas, and multitudes of poor people are employed in

working them; but the number of the poor is almost ready to eat up

the rich.  However, this town sends two members to Parliament,

though it is under no form of government particularly to itself

other than as a village, the head magistrate whereof is a

constable.



Near adjoining to it is a village called Long Melfort, and a very

long one it is, from which I suppose it had that addition to its

name; it is full of very good houses, and, as they told me, is

richer, and has more wealthy masters of the manufacture in it, than

in Sudbury itself.



Here and in the neighbourhood are some ancient families of good

note; particularly here is a fine dwelling, the ancient seat of the

Cordells, whereof Sir William Cordell was Master of the Rolls in

the time of Queen Elizabeth; but the family is now extinct, the

last heir, Sir John Cordell, being killed by a fall from his horse,

died unmarried, leaving three sisters co-heiresses to a very noble

estate, most of which, if not all, is now centred on the only

surviving sister, and with her in marriage is given to Mr.

Firebrass, eldest son of Sir Basil Firebrass, formerly a

flourishing merchant in London, but reduced by many disasters.  His

family now rises by the good fortune of his son, who proves to be a

gentleman of very agreeable parts, and well esteemed in the

country.



From this part of the country, I returned north-west by Lenham, to

visit St. Edmund's Bury, a town of which other writers have talked

very largely, and perhaps a little too much.  It is a town famed

for its pleasant situation and wholesome air, the Montpelier of

Suffolk, and perhaps of England.  This must be attributed to the

skill of the monks of those times, who chose so beautiful a

situation for the seat of their retirement; and who built here the

greatest and, in its time, the most flourishing monastery in all

these parts of England, I mean the monastery of St. Edmund the

Martyr.  It was, if we believe antiquity, a house of pleasure in

more ancient times, or to speak more properly, a court of some of

the Saxon or East Angle kings; and, as Mr. Camden says, was even

then called a royal village, though it much better merits that name

now; it being the town of all this part of England, in proportion

to its bigness, most thronged with gentry, people of the best

fashion, and the most polite conversation.  This beauty and

healthiness of its situation was no doubt the occasion which drew

the clergy to settle here, for they always chose the best places in

the country to build in, either for richness of soil, or for health

and pleasure in the situation of their religious houses.



For the like reason, I doubt not, they translated the bones of the

martyred king St. Edmund to this place; for it is a vulgar error to

say he was murdered here.  His martyrdom, it is plain, was at Hoxon

or Henilsdon, near Harlston, on the Waveney, in the farthest

northern verge of the county; but Segebert, king of the East

Angles, had built a religions house in this pleasant rich part of

the county; and as the monks began to taste the pleasure of the

place, they procured the body of this saint to be removed hither,

which soon increased the wealth and revenues of their house, by the

zeal of that day, in going on pilgrimage to the shrine of the

blessed St. Edmund.



We read, however, that after this the Danes, under King Sweno,

over-running this part of the country, destroyed this monastery and

burnt it to the ground, with the church and town.  But see the turn

religion gives to things in the world; his son, King Canutus, at

first a Pagan and a tyrant, and the most cruel ravager of all that

crew, coming to turn Christian, and being touched in conscience for

the soul of his father, in having robbed God and his holy martyr

St. Edmund, sacrilegiously destroying the church, and plundering

the monastery; I say, touched with remorse, and, as the monks

pretend, terrified with a vision of St. Edmund appearing to him, he

rebuilt the house, the church, and the town also, and very much

added to the wealth of the abbot and his fraternity, offering his

crown at the feet of St. Edmund, giving the house to the monks,

town and all; so that they were absolute lords of the town, and

governed it by their steward for many ages.  He also gave them a

great many good lordships, which they enjoyed till the general

suppression of abbeys, in the time of Henry VIII.



But I am neither writing the history or searching the antiquity of

the abbey, or town; my business is the present state of the place.



The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seen of

its glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches are

built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is divided,

and they stand both in one churchyard.  Here it was, in the path-

way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost unheard-

of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place less

pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke, Esq.,

a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with the

assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murder in cold blood, and in

the arms of hospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq., his brother-in-law,

leading him out from his own house, where he had invited him, his

wife and children, to supper; I say, leading him out in the night,

on pretence of going to see some friend that was known to them

both; but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin he

had hired, he attacked him with a hedge-bill, and cut him, as one

might say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of his

being dead, they left him.  His head and face was so mangled, that

it may be said to be next to a miracle that he was not quite

killed: yet so Providence directed for the exemplary punishment of

the assassins, that the gentleman recovered to detect them, who

(though he outlived the assault) were both executed as they

deserved, and Mr. Crisp is yet alive.  They were condemned on the

statute for defacing and dismembering, called the Coventry Act.



But this accident does not at all lessen the pleasure and agreeable

delightful show of the town of Bury; it is crowded with nobility

and gentry, and all sorts of the most agreeable company; and as the

company invites, so there is the appearance of pleasure upon the

very situation; and they that live at Bury are supposed to live

there for the sake of it.



The Lord Jermin, afterwards Lord Dover, and, since his lordship's

decease, Sir Robert Davers, enjoyed the most delicious seat of

Rushbrook, near this town.



The present members of Parliament for this place are Jermyn Davers

and James Reynolds, Esquires.



Mr. Harvey, afterwards created Lord Harvey, by King William, and

since that made Earl of Bristol by King George, lived many years in

this town, leaving a noble and pleasantly situated house in

Lincolnshire, for the more agreeable living on a spot so completely

qualified for a life of delight as this of Bury.



The Duke of Grafton, now Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, has also a

stately house at Euston, near this town, which he enjoys in right

of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Arlington, one of the chief

ministers of State in the reign of King Charles II., and who made

the second letter in the word "cabal," a word formed by that famous

satirist Andrew Marvell, to represent the five heads of the

politics of that time, as the word "smectymnus" was on a former

occasion.



I shall believe nothing so scandalous of the ladies of this town

and the country round it as a late writer insinuates.  That the

ladies round the country appear mighty gay and agreeable at the

time of the fair in this town I acknowledge; one hardly sees such a

show in any part of the world; but to suggest they come hither, as

to a market, is so coarse a jest, that the gentlemen that wait on

them hither (for they rarely come but in good company) ought to

resent and correct him for it.



It is true, Bury Fair, like Bartholomew Fair, is a fair for

diversion, more than for trade; and it may be a fair for toys and

for trinkets, which the ladies may think fit to lay out some of

their money in, as they see occasion.  But to judge from thence

that the knights' daughters of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk

- that is to say, for it cannot be understood any otherwise, the

daughters of all the gentry of the three counties - come hither to

be picked up, is a way of speaking I never before heard any author

have the assurance to make use of in print.



The assembly he justly commends for the bright appearance of the

beauties; but with a sting in the tail of this compliment, where he

says they seldom end without some considerable match or intrigue;

and yet he owns that during the fair these assemblies are held

every night.  Now that these fine ladies go intriguing every night,

and that too after the comedy is done, which is after the fair and

raffling is over for the day, so that it must be very late.  This

is a terrible character for the ladies of Bury, and intimates, in

short, that most of them are loose women, which is a horrid abuse

upon the whole country.



Now, though I like not the assemblies at all, and shall in another

place give them something of their due, yet having the opportunity

to see the fair at Bury, and to see that there were, indeed,

abundance of the finest ladies, or as fine as any in Britain, yet I

must own the number of the ladies at the comedy, or at the

assembly, is no way equal to the number that are seen in the town,

much less are they equal to the whole body of the ladies in the

three counties; and I must also add, that though it is far from

true that all that appear at the assembly are there for matches or

intrigues, yet I will venture to say that they are not the worst of

the ladies who stay away, neither are they the fewest in number or

the meanest in beauty, but just the contrary; and I do not at all

doubt, but that the scandalous liberty some take at those

assemblies will in time bring them out of credit with the virtuous

part of the sex here, as it has done already in Kent and other

places, and that those ladies who most value their reputation will

be seen less there than they have been; for though the institution

of them has been innocent and virtuous, the ill use of them, and

the scandalous behaviour of some people at them, will in time arm

virtue against them, and they will be laid down as they have been

set up without much satisfaction.



But the beauty of this town consists in the number of gentry who

dwell in and near it, the polite conversation among them, the

affluence and plenty they live in, the sweet air they breathe in,

and the pleasant country they have to go abroad in.



Here is no manufacturing in this town, or but very little, except

spinning, the chief trade of the place depending upon the gentry

who live there, or near it, and who cannot fail to cause trade

enough by the expense of their families and equipages among the

people of a county town.  They have but a very small river, or

rather but a very small branch of a small river, at this town,

which runs from hence to Milden Hall, on the edge of the fens.

However, the town and gentlemen about have been at the charge, or

have so encouraged the engineer who was at the charge, that they

have made this river navigable to the said Milden Hall, from whence

there is a navigable dyke, called Milden Hall Drain, which goes

into the River Ouse, and so to Lynn; so that all their coal and

wine, iron, lead, and other heavy goods, are brought by water from

Lynn, or from London, by the way of Lynn, to the great ease of the

tradesmen.



This town is famous for two great events.  One was that in the year

1447, in the 25th year of Henry VI., a Parliament was held here.



The other was, that at the meeting of this Parliament, the great

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, regent of the kingdom during the

absence of King Henry V. and the minority of Henry VI., and to his

last hour the safeguard of the whole nation, and darling of the

people, was basely murdered here; by whose death the gate was

opened to that dreadful war between the houses of Lancaster and

York, which ended in the confusion of that very race who are

supposed to have contrived that murder.



From St. Edmund's Bury I returned by Stowmarket and Needham to

Ipswich, that I might keep as near the coast as was proper to my

designed circuit or journey; and from Ipswich, to visit the sea

again, I went to Woodbridge, and from thence to Orford, on the sea

side.



Woodbridge has nothing remarkable, but that it is a considerable

market for butter and corn to be exported to London; for now begins

that part which is ordinarily called High Suffolk, which, being a

rich soil, is for a long tract of ground wholly employed in

dairies, and they again famous for the best butter, and perhaps the

worst cheese, in England.  The butter is barrelled, or often

pickled up in small casks, and sold, not in London only, but I have

known a firkin of Suffolk butter sent to the West Indies, and

brought back to England again, and has been perfectly good and

sweet, as at first.



The port for the shipping off their Suffolk butter is chiefly

Woodbridge, which for that reason is full of corn factors and

butter factors, some of whom are very considerable merchants.



From hence, turning down to the shore, we see Orfordness, a noted

point of land for the guide of the colliers and coasters, and a

good shelter for them to ride under when a strong north-east wind

blows and makes a foul shore on the coast.



South of the Ness is Orford Haven, being the mouth of two little

rivers meeting together.  It is a very good harbour for small

vessels, but not capable of receiving a ship of burden.



Orford was once a good town, but is decayed, and as it stands on

the land side of the river the sea daily throws up more land to it,

and falls off itself from it, as if it was resolved to disown the

place, and that it should be a seaport no longer.



A little farther lies Aldborough, as thriving, though without a

port, as the other is decaying, with a good river in the front of

it.



There are some gentlemen's seats up farther from the sea, but very

few upon the coast.



From Aldborough to Dunwich there are no towns of note; even this

town seems to be in danger of being swallowed up, for fame reports

that once they had fifty churches in the town; I saw but one left,

and that not half full of people.



This town is a testimony of the decay of public things, things of

the most durable nature; and as the old poet expresses it,





"By numerous examples we may see,

That towns and cities die as well as we."





The ruins of Carthage, of the great city of Jerusalem, or of

ancient Rome, are not at all wonderful to me.  The ruins of

Nineveh, which are so entirety sunk as that it is doubtful where

the city stood; the ruins of Babylon, or the great Persepolis, and

many capital cities, which time and the change of monarchies have

overthrown, these, I say, are not at all wonderful, because being

the capitals of great and flourishing kingdoms, where those

kingdoms were overthrown, the capital cities necessarily fell with

them; but for a private town, a seaport, and a town of commerce, to

decay, as it were, of itself (for we never read of Dunwich being

plundered or ruined by any disaster, at least, not of late years);

this, I must confess, seems owing to nothing but to the fate of

things, by which we see that towns, kings, countries, families, and

persons, have all their elevation, their medium, their declination,

and even their destruction in the womb of time, and the course of

nature.  It is true, this town is manifestly decayed by the

invasion of the waters, and as other towns seem sufferers by the

sea, or the tide withdrawing from their ports, such as Orford, just

now named, Winchelsea in Kent, and the like, so this town is, as it

were, eaten up by the sea, as above; and the still encroaching

ocean seems to threaten it with a fatal immersion in a few years

more.



Yet Dunwich, however ruined, retains some share of trade, as

particularly for the shipping of butter, cheese, and corn, which is

so great a business in this county, that it employs a great many

people and ships also; and this port lies right against the

particular part of the county for butter, as Framlingham, Halstead,

etc.  Also a very great quantity of corn is bought up hereabout for

the London market; for I shall still touch that point how all the

counties in England contribute something towards the subsistence of

the great city of London, of which the butter here is a very

considerable article; as also coarse cheese, which I mentioned

before, used chiefly for the king's ships.



Hereabouts they begin to talk of herrings and the fishery; and we

find in the ancient records that this town, which was then equal to

a large city, paid, among other tribute to the government, fifty

thousand of herrings.  Here also, and at Swole, or Southole, the

next seaport, they cure sprats in the same manner as they do

herrings at Yarmouth; that is to say, speaking in their own

language, they make red sprats; or to speak good English, they make

sprats red.



It is remarkable that this town is now so much washed away by the

sea, that what little trade they have is carried on by Walderswick,

a little town near Swole, the vessels coming in there, because the

ruins of Dunwich make the shore there unsafe and uneasy to the

boats; from whence the northern coasting seamen a rude verse of

their own using, and I suppose of their own making, as follows,





"Swoul and Dunwich, and Walderswick,

All go in at one lousie creek."





This "lousie creek," in short, is a little river at Swoul, which

our late famous atlas-maker calls a good harbour for ships, and

rendezvous of the royal navy; but that by-the-bye; the author, it

seems, knew no better.



From Dunwich we came to Southwold, the town above-named: this is a

small port town upon the coast, at the mouth of a little river

called the Blith.  I found no business the people here were

employed in but the fishery, as above, for herrings and sprats,

which they cure by the help of smoke, as they do at Yarmouth.



There is but one church in this town, but it is a very large one

and well built, as most of the churches in this county are, and of

impenetrable flint; indeed, there is no occasion for its being so

large, for staying there one Sabbath day, I was surprised to see an

extraordinary large church, capable of receiving five or six

thousand people, and but twenty-seven in it besides the parson and

the clerk; but at the same time the meeting-house of the Dissenters

was full to the very doors, having, as I guessed, from six to eight

hundred people in it.



This town is made famous for a very great engagement at sea, in the

year 1672, between the English and Dutch fleets, in the bay

opposite to the town, in which, not to be partial to ourselves, the

English fleet was worsted; and the brave Montague, Earl of

Sandwich, Admiral under the Duke of York, lost his life.  The ship

ROYAL PRINCE, carrying one hundred guns, in which he was, and which

was under him, commanded by Sir Edward Spragg, was burnt, and

several other ships lost, and about six hundred seamen; part of

those killed in the fight were, as I was told, brought on shore

here and buried in the churchyard of this town, as others also were

at Ipswich.



At this town in particular, and so at all the towns on this coast,

from Orfordness to Yarmouth, is the ordinary place where our summer

friends the swallows first land when they come to visit us; and

here they may be said to embark for their return, when they go back

into warmer climates; and as I think the following remark, though

of so trifling a circumstance, may be both instructing as well as

diverting, it may be very proper in this place.  The case is this;

I was some years before at this place, at the latter end of the

year, viz., about the beginning of October, and lodging in a house

that looked into the churchyard, I observed in the evening, an

unusual multitude of birds sitting on the leads of the church.

Curiosity led me to go nearer to see what they were, and I found

they were all swallows; that there was such an infinite number that

they covered the whole roof of the church, and of several houses

near, and perhaps might of more houses which I did not see.  This

led me to inquire of a grave gentleman whom I saw near me, what the

meaning was of such a prodigious multitude of swallows sitting

there.  "Oh, sir," says he, turning towards the sea, "you may see

the reason; the wind is off sea."  I did not seem fully informed by

that expression, so he goes on, "I perceive, sir," says he, "you

are a stranger to it; you must then understand first, that this is

the season of the year when the swallows, their food here failing,

begin to leave us, and return to the country, wherever it be, from

whence I suppose they came; and this being the nearest to the coast

of Holland, they come here to embark" (this he said smiling a

little); "and now, sir," says he, "the weather being too calm or

the wind contrary, they are waiting for a gale, for they are all

wind-bound."



This was more evident to me, when in the morning I found the wind

had come about to the north-west in the night, and there was not

one swallow to be seen of near a million, which I believe was there

the night before.



How those creatures know that this part of the Island of Great

Britain is the way to their home, or the way that they are to go;

that this very point is the nearest cut over, or even that the

nearest cut is best for them, that we must leave to the naturalists

to determine, who insist upon it that brutes cannot think.



Certain it is that the swallows neither come hither for warm

weather nor retire from cold; the thing is of quite another nature.

They, like the shoals of fish in the sea, pursue their prey; they

are a voracious creature, they feed flying; their food is found in

the air, viz., the insects, of which in our summer evenings, in

damp and moist places, the air is full.  They come hither in the

summer because our air is fuller of fogs and damps than in other

countries, and for that reason feeds great quantities of insects.

If the air be hot and dry the gnats die of themselves, and even the

swallows will be found famished for want, and fall down dead out of

the air, their food being taken from them.  In like manner, when

cold weather comes in the insects all die, and then of necessity

the swallows quit us, and follow their food wherever they go.  This

they do in the manner I have mentioned above, for sometimes they

are seen to go off in vast flights like a cloud.  And sometimes

again, when the wind grows fair, they go away a few and a few as

they come, not staying at all upon the coast.



Note. - This passing and re-passing of the swallows is observed

nowhere so much, that I have heard of, or in but few other places,

except on this eastern coast, namely, from above Harwich to the

east point of Norfolk, called Winterton Ness, North, which is all

right against Holland.  We know nothing of them any farther north,

the passage of the sea being, as I suppose, too broad from

Flamborough Head and the shore of Holderness in Yorkshire, etc.



I find very little remarkable on this side of Suffolk, but what is

on the sea-shore as above.  The inland country is that which they

properly call High Suffolk, and is full of rich feeding grounds and

large farms, mostly employed in dairies for making the Suffolk

butter and cheese, of which I have spoken already.  Among these

rich grounds stand some market towns, though not of very

considerable note; such as Framlingham, where was once a royal

castle, to which Queen Mary retired when the Northumberland

faction, in behalf of the Lady Jane, endeavoured to supplant her.

And it was this part of Suffolk where the Gospellers, as they were

then called, preferred their loyalty to their religion, and

complimented the Popish line at expense of their share of the

Reformation.  But they paid dear for it, and their successors have

learned better politics since.



In these parts are also several good market towns, some in this

county and some in the other, as Beccles, Bungay, Harlston, etc.,

all on the edge of the River Waveney, which parts here the counties

of Suffolk and Norfolk.  And here in a bye-place, and out of common

remark, lies the ancient town of Hoxon, famous for being the place

where St. Edmund was martyred, for whom so many cells and shrines

have been set up and monasteries built, and in honour of whom the

famous monastery of St. Edmundsbury, above mentioned, was founded,

which most people erroneously think was the place where the said

murder was committed.



Besides the towns mentioned above, there are Halesworth,

Saxmundham, Debenham, Aye, or Eye, all standing in this eastern

side of Suffolk, in which, as I have said, the whole country is

employed in dairies or in feeding of cattle.



This part of England is also remarkable for being the first where

the feeding and fattening of cattle, both sheep as well as black

cattle, with turnips, was first practised in England, which is made

a very great part of the improvement of their lands to this day,

and from whence the practice is spread over most of the east and

south parts of England to the great enriching of the farmers and

increase of fat cattle.  And though some have objected against the

goodness of the flesh thus fed with turnips, and have fancied it

would taste of the root, yet upon experience it is found that at

market there is no difference, nor can they that buy single out one

joint of mutton from another by the taste.  So that the complaint

which our nice palates at first made begins to cease of itself, and

a very great quantity of beef and mutton also is brought every year

and every week to London from this side of England, and much more

than was formerly known to be fed there.



I cannot omit, however little it may seem, that this county of

Suffolk is particularly famous for furnishing the City of London

and all the counties round with turkeys, and that it is thought

there are more turkeys bred in this county and the part of Norfolk

that adjoins to it than in all the rest of England, especially for

sale, though this may be reckoned, as I say above, but a trifling

thing to take notice of in these remarks; yet, as I have hinted,

that I shall observe how London is in general supplied with all its

provisions from the whole body of the nation, and how every part of

the island is engaged in some degree or other of that supply.  On

this account I could not omit it, nor will it be found so

inconsiderable an article as some may imagine, if this be true,

which I received an account of from a person living on the place,

viz., that they have counted three hundred droves of turkeys (for

they drive them all in droves on foot) pass in one season over

Stratford Bridge on the River Stour, which parts Suffolk from

Essex, about six miles from Colchester, on the road from Ipswich to

London.  These droves, as they say, generally contain from three

hundred to a thousand each drove; so that one may suppose them to

contain five hundred one with another, which is one hundred and

fifty thousand in all; and yet this is one of the least passages,

the numbers which travel by Newmarket Heath and the open country

and the forest, and also the numbers that come by Sudbury and Clare

being many more.



For the further supplies of the markets of London with poultry, of

which these countries particularly abound, they have within these

few years found it practicable to make the geese travel on foot

too, as well as the turkeys, and a prodigious number are brought up

to London in droves from the farthest parts of Norfolk; even from

the fen country about Lynn, Downham, Wisbech, and the Washes; as

also from all the east side of Norfolk and Suffolk, of whom it is

very frequent now to meet droves with a thousand, sometimes two

thousand in a drove.  They begin to drive them generally in August,

by which time the harvest is almost over, and the geese may feed in

the stubbles as they go.  Thus they hold on to the end of October,

when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their broad feet

and short legs to march in.



Besides these methods of driving these creatures on foot, they have

of late also invented a new method of carriage, being carts formed

on purpose, with four stories or stages to put the creatures in one

above another, by which invention one cart will carry a very great

number; and for the smoother going they drive with two horses

abreast, like a coach, so quartering the road for the ease of the

gentry that thus ride.  Changing horses, they travel night and day,

so that they bring the fowls seventy, eighty, or, one hundred miles

in two days and one night.  The horses in this new-fashioned

voiture go two abreast, as above, but no perch below, as in a

coach, but they are fastened together by a piece of wood lying

crosswise upon their necks, by which they are kept even and

together, and the driver sits on the top of the cart like as in the

public carriages for the army, etc.



In this manner they hurry away the creatures alive, and infinite

numbers are thus carried to London every year.  This method is also

particular for the carrying young turkeys or turkey poults in their

season, which are valuable, and yield a good price at market; as

also for live chickens in the dear seasons, of all which a very

great number are brought in this manner to London, and more

prodigiously out of this country than any other part of England,

which is the reason of my speaking of it here.



In this part, which we call High Suffolk, there are not so many

families of gentry or nobility placed as in the other side of the

country.  But it is observed that though their seats are not so

frequent here, their estates are; and the pleasure of West Suffolk

is much of it supported by the wealth of High Suffolk, for the

richness of the lands and application of the people to all kinds of

improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very

considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very

frequent for a farmer to have 1,000 pounds stock upon his farm in

cows only.





NORFOLK.





From High Suffolk I passed the Waveney into Norfolk, near Schole

Inn.  In my passage I saw at Redgrave (the seat of the family) a

most exquisite monument of Sir John Holt, Knight, late Lord Chief

Justice of the King's Bench several years, and one of the most

eminent lawyers of his time.  One of the heirs of the family is now

building a fine seat about a mile on the south side of Ipswich,

near the road.



The epitaph or inscription on this monument is as follows:-





M. S.

D. Johannis Holt, Equitis Aur.

Totius Anglioe in Banco Regis

per 21 Annos continuos

Capitalis Justitiarii

Gulielmo Regi Annoequr Reginae

Consiliarii perpetui:

Libertatis ac Legum Anglicarum

Assertoris, Vindicis, Custodis,

Vigilis Acris & intrepidi,

Rolandus Frater Uncius & Hoeres

Optime de se Merito

posuit,

Die Martis Vto. 1709.  Sublatus est

ex Oculis nostris

Natus 30 Decembris, Anno 1642.





When we come into Norfolk, we see a face of diligence spread over

the whole country; the vast manufactures carried on (in chief) by

the Norwich weavers employs all the country round in spinning yarn

for them; besides many thousand packs of yarn which they receive

from other countries, even from as far as Yorkshire and

Westmoreland, of which I shall speak in its place.



This side of Norfolk is very populous, and thronged with great and

spacious market-towns, more and larger than any other part of

England so far from London, except Devonshire, and the West Riding

of Yorkshire; for example, between the frontiers of Suffolk and the

city of Norwich on this side, which is not above 22 miles in

breadth, are the following market-towns, viz.:-





Thetford, Hingham, Harleston,

Diss, West Dereham, E. Dereham,

Harling, Attleborough, Watton,

Bucknam, Windham, Loddon, etc.





Most of these towns are very populous and large; but that which is

most remarkable is, that the whole country round them is so

interspersed with villages, and those villages so large, and so

full of people, that they are equal to market-towns in other

countries; in a word, they render this eastern part of Norfolk

exceeding full of inhabitants.



An eminent weaver of Norwich gave me a scheme of their trade on

this occasion, by which, calculating from the number of looms at

that time employed in the city of Norwich only, besides those

employed in other towns in the same county, he made it appear very

plain, that there were 120,000 people employed in the woollen and

silk and wool manufactures of that city only; not that the people

all lived in the city, though Norwich is a very large and populous

city too: but, I say, they were employed for spinning the yarn used

for such goods as were all made in that city.  This account is

curious enough, and very exact, but it is too long for the compass

of this work.



This shows the wonderful extent of the Norwich manufacture, or

stuff-weaving trade, by which so many thousands of families are

maintained.  Their trade, indeed, felt a very sensible decay, and

the cries of the poor began to be very loud, when the wearing of

painted calicoes was grown to such a height in England, as was seen

about two or three years ago; but an Act of Parliament having been

obtained, though not without great struggle, in the years 1720 and

1721, for prohibiting the use and wearing of calicoes, the stuff

trade revived incredibly; and as I passed this part of the country

in the year 1723, the manufacturers assured me that there was not,

in all the eastern and middle part of Norfolk, any hand unemployed,

if they would work; and that the very children, after four or five

years of age, could every one earn their own bread.  But I return

to speak of the villages and towns in the rest of the county; I

shall come to the city of Norwich by itself.



This throng of villages continues through all the east part of the

country, which is of the greatest extent, and where the manufacture

is chiefly carried on.  If any part of it be waste and thin of

inhabitants, it is the west part, drawing a line from about Brand,

or Brandon, south, to Walsinghan, north.  This part of the country

indeed is full of open plains, and somewhat sandy and barren, and

feeds great flocks of good sheep; but put it all together, the

county of Norfolk has the most people in the least tract of land of

any county in England, except about London, and Exon, and the West

Riding of Yorkshire, as above.



Add to this, that there is no single county in England, except as

above, that can boast of three towns so populous, so rich, and so

famous for trade and navigation, as in this county.  By these three

towns, I mean the city of Norwich, the towns of Yarmouth and Lynn.

Besides that, it has several other seaports of very good trade, as

Wisbech, Wells, Burnham, Clye, etc.



Norwich is the capital of all the county, and the centre of all the

trade and manufactures which I have just mentioned; an ancient,

large, rich, and populous city.  If a stranger was only to ride

through or view the city of Norwich for a day, he would have much

more reason to think there was a town without inhabitants, than

there is really to say so of Ipswich; but on the contrary if he was

to view the city, either on a Sabbath-day, or on any public

occasion, he would wonder where all the people could dwell, the

multitude is so great.  But the case is this: the inhabitants being

all busy at their manufactures, dwell in their garrets at their

looms, and in their combing shops (so they call them), twisting-

mills, and other work-houses, almost all the works they are

employed in being done within doors.  There are in this city

thirty-two parishes besides the cathedral, and a great many

meeting-houses of Dissenters of all denominations.  The public

edifices are chiefly the castle, ancient and decayed, and now for

many years past made use of for a gaol.  The Duke of Norfolk's

house was formerly kept well, and the gardens preserved for the

pleasure and diversion of the citizens, but since feeling too

sensibly the sinking circumstances of that once glorious family,

who were the first peers and hereditary earl-marshals of England.



The walls of this city are reckoned three miles in circumference,

taking in more ground than the City of London, but much of that

ground lying open in pasture-fields and gardens; nor does it seem

to be, like some ancient places, a decayed, declining town, and

that the walls mark out its ancient dimensions; for we do not see

room to suppose that it was ever larger or more populous than it is

now.  But the walls seem to be placed as if they expected that the

city would in time increase sufficiently to fill them up with

buildings.



The cathedral of this city is a fine fabric, and the spire steeple

very high and beautiful.  It is not ancient, the bishop's see

having been first at Thetford, from whence it was not translated

hither till the twelfth century.  Yet the church has so many

antiquities in it, that our late great scholar and physician, Sir

Thomas Brown, thought it worth his while to write a whole book to

collect the monuments and inscriptions in this church, to which I

refer the reader.



The River Yare runs through this city, and is navigable thus far

without the help of any art (that is to say, without locks or

stops), and being increased by other waters, passes afterwards

through a long tract of the richest meadows, and the largest, take

them all together, that are anywhere in England, lying for thirty

miles in length, from this city to Yarmouth, including the return

of the said meadows on the bank of the Waveney south, and on the

River Thyrn north.



Here is one thing indeed strange in itself, and more so, in that

history seems to be quite ignorant of the occasion of it.  The

River Waveney is a considerable river, and of a deep and full

channel, navigable for large barges as high as Beccles; it runs for

a course of about fifty miles, between the two counties of Suffolk

and Norfolk, as a boundary to both; and pushing on, though with a

gentle stream, towards the sea, no one would doubt, but, that when

they see the river growing broader and deeper, and going directly

towards the sea, even to the edge of the beach - that is to say,

within a mile of the main ocean - no stranger, I say, but would

expect to see its entrance into the sea at that place, and a noble

harbour for ships at the mouth of it; when on a sudden, the land

rising high by the seaside, crosses the head of the river, like a

dam, checks the whole course of it, and it returns, bending its

course west, for two miles, or thereabouts; and then turning north,

through another long course of meadows (joining to those just now

mentioned) seeks out the River Yare, that it may join its water

with hers, and find their way to the sea together



Some of our historians tell a long, fabulous story of this river

being once open, and a famous harbour for ships belonging to a town

of Lowestoft adjoining; but that the town of Yarmouth envying the

prosperity of the said town of Lowestoft, made war upon them; and

that after many bloody battles, as well by sea as by land, they

came at last to a decisive action at sea with their respective

fleets, and the victory fell to the Yarmouth men, the Lowestoft

fleet being overthrown and utterly destroyed; and that upon this

victory, the Yarmouth men either actually did stop up the mouth of

the said river, or obliged the vanquished Lowestoft men to do it

themselves, and bound them never to attempt to open it again.



I believe my share of this story, and I recommend no more of it to

the reader; adding, that I see no authority for the relation,

neither do the relators agree either in the time of it, or in the

particulars of the fact; that is to say, in whose reign, or under

what government all this happened; in what year, and the like; so I

satisfy myself with transcribing the matter of fact, and then leave

it as I find it.



In this vast tract of meadows are fed a prodigious number of black

cattle which are said to be fed up for the fattest beef, though not

the largest in England; and the quantity is so great, as that they

not only supply the city of Norwich, the town of Yarmouth, and

county adjacent, but send great quantities of them weekly in all

the winter season to London.



And this in particular is worthy remark, that the gross of all the

Scots cattle which come yearly into England are brought hither,

being brought to a small village lying north of the city of

Norwich, called St. Faith's, where the Norfolk graziers go and buy

them.



These Scots runts, so they call them, coming out of the cold and

barren mountains of the Highlands in Scotland, feed so eagerly on

the rich pasture in these marshes, that they thrive in an unusual

manner, and grow monstrously fat; and the beef is so delicious for

taste, that the inhabitants prefer them to the English cattle,

which are much larger and fairer to look at; and they may very well

do so.  Some have told me, and I believe with good judgment, that

there are above forty thousand of these Scots cattle fed in this

county every year, and most of them in the said marshes between

Norwich, Beccles, and Yarmouth.



Yarmouth is an ancient town, much older than Norwich; and at

present, though not standing on so much ground, yet better built;

much more complete; for number of inhabitants, not much inferior;

and for wealth, trade, and advantage of its situation, infinitely

superior to Norwich.



It is placed on a peninsula between the River Yare and the sea; the

two last lying parallel to one another, and the town in the middle.

The river lies on the west side of the town, and being grown very

large and deep, by a conflux of all the rivers on this side the

county, forms the haven; and the town facing to the west also, and

open to the river, makes the finest quay in England, if not in

Europe, not inferior even to that of Marseilles itself.



The ships ride here so close, and, as it were, keeping up one

another, with their headfasts on shore, that for half a mile

together they go across the stream with their bowsprits over the

land, their bows, or heads touching the very wharf; so that one may

walk from ship to ship as on a floating bridge, all along by the

shore-side.  The quay reaching from the drawbridge almost to the

south gate, is so spacious and wide, that in some places it is near

one hundred yards from the houses to the wharf.  In this pleasant

and agreeable range of houses are some very magnificent buildings,

and among the rest, the Custom House and Town Hall, and some

merchant's houses, which look like little palaces rather than the

dwelling-houses of private men.



The greatest defect of this beautiful town seems to be that, though

it is very rich and increasing in wealth and trade, and

consequently in people, there is not room to enlarge the town by

building, which would be certainly done much more than it is, but

that the river on the land side prescribes them, except at the

north end without the gate; and even there the land is not very

agreeable.  But had they had a larger space within the gates there

would before now have been many spacious streets of noble fine

buildings erected, as we see is done in some other thriving towns

in England, as at Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Frome, etc.



The quay and the harbour of this town during the fishing fair, as

they call it, which is every Michaelmas, one sees the land covered

with people, and the river with barques and boats, busy day and

night landing and carrying of the herrings, which they catch here

in such prodigious quantities, that it is incredible.  I happened

to be there during their fishing fair, when I told in one tide 110

barques and fishing vessels coming up the river all laden with

herrings, and all taken the night before; and this was besides what

was brought on shore on the Dean (that is the seaside of the town)

by open boats, which they call cobles, and which often bring in two

or three last of fish at a time.  The barques often bring in ten

last a piece.



This fishing fair begins on Michaelmas Day, and lasts all the month

of October, by which time the herrings draw off to sea, shoot their

spawn, and are no more fit for the merchant's business - at least,

not those that are taken thereabouts.



The quantity of herrings that are caught in this season are

diversely accounted for.  Some have said that the towns of Yarmouth

and Lowestoft only have taken 40,000 last in a season.  I will not

venture to confirm that report; but this I have heard the merchants

themselves say, viz., that they have cured - that is to say, hanged

and dried in the smoke - 40,000 barrels of merchantable red

herrings in one season, which is in itself (though far short of the

other) yet a very considerable article; and it is to be added that

this is besides all the herrings consumed in the country towns of

both those populous counties for thirty miles from the sea, whither

very great quantities are carried every tide during the whole

season.



But this is only one branch of the great trade carried on in this

town.  Another part of this commerce is in the exporting these

herrings after they are cured; and for this their merchants have a

great trade to Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Messina, and Venice; as also

to Spain and Portugal, also exporting with their herring very great

quantities of worsted stuffs, and stuffs made of silk and worsted,

camblets, etc., the manufactures of the neighbouring city of

Norwich and of the places adjacent.



Besides this, they carry on a very considerable trade with Holland,

whose opposite neighbours they are; and a vast quantity of woollen

manufactures they export to the Dutch every year.  Also they have a

fishing trade to the North Seas for white fish, which from the

place are called the North Sea cod.



They have also a considerable trade to Norway and to the Baltic,

from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oaken plank,

balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas, and

sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which they generally

have a consumption for in their own port, where they build a very

great number of ships every year, besides refitting and repairing

the old.



Add to this the coal trade between Newcastle and the river of

Thames, in which they are so improved of late years that they have

now a greater share of it than any other town in England, and have

quite worked the Ipswich men out of it who had formerly the chief

share of the colliery in their hands.



For the carrying on all these trades they must have a very great

number of ships, either of their own or employed by them: and it

may in some measure be judged of by this that in the year 1697, I

had an account from the town register that there was then 1,123

sail of ships using the sea and belonged to the town, besides such

ships as the merchants of Yarmouth might be concerned in, and be

part owners of, belonging to any other ports.



To all this I must add, without compliment to the town or to the

people, that the merchants, and even the generality of traders of

Yarmouth, have a very good reputation in trade as well abroad as at

home for men of fair and honourable dealing, punctual and just in

their performing their engagements and in discharging commissions;

and their seamen, as well masters as mariners, are justly esteemed

among the ablest and most expert navigators in England.



This town, however populous and large, was ever contained in one

parish, and had but one church; but within these two years they

have built another very fine church near the south end of the town.

The old church is dedicated to St. Nicholas, and was built by that

famous Bishop of Norwich, William Herbert, who flourished in the

reign of William II., and Henry I., William of Malmesbury, calls

him VIR PECUNIOSUS; he might have called him VIR PECUNIOSISSIMUS,

considering the times he lived in, and the works of charity and

munificence which he has left as witnesses of his immense riches;

for he built the Cathedral Church, the Priory for sixty monks, the

Bishop's Palace, and the parish church of St. Leonard, all in

Norwich; this great church at Yarmouth, the Church of St. Margaret

at Lynn, and of St. Mary at Elmham.  He removed the episcopal see

from Thetford to Norwich, and instituted the Cluniack Monks at

Thetford, and gave them or built them a house.  This old church is

very large, and has a high spire, which is a useful sea-mark.



Here is one of the finest market-places and the best served with

provisions in England, London excepted; and the inhabitants are so

multiplied in a few years that they seem to want room in their town

rather than people to fill it, as I have observed above.



The streets are all exactly straight from north to south, with

lanes or alleys, which they call rows, crossing them in straight

lines also from east to west, so that it is the most regular built

town in England, and seems to have been built all at once; or that

the dimensions of the houses and extent of the streets were laid

out by consent.



They have particular privileges in this town and a jurisdiction by

which they can try, condemn, and execute in especial cases without

waiting for a warrant from above; and this they exerted once very

smartly in executing a captain of one of the king's ships of war in

the reign of King Charles II. for a murder committed in the street,

the circumstance of which did indeed call for justice; but some

thought they would not have ventured to exert their powers as they

did.  However, I never heard that the Government resented it or

blamed them for it.



It is also a very well-governed town, and I have nowhere in England

observed the Sabbath day so exactly kept, or the breach so

continually punished, as in this place, which I name to their

honour.



Among all these regularities it is no wonder if we do not find

abundance of revelling, or that there is little encouragement to

assemblies, plays, and gaming meetings at Yarmouth as in some other

places; and yet I do not see that the ladies here come behind any

of the neighbouring counties, either in beauty, breeding, or

behaviour; to which may be added too, not at all to their

disadvantage, that they generally go beyond them in fortunes.



From Yarmouth I resolved to pursue my first design, viz., to view

the seaside on this coast, which is particularly famous for being

one of the most dangerous and most fatal to the sailors in all

England - I may say in all Britain - and the more so because of the

great number of ships which are continually going and coming this

way in their passage between London and all the northern coasts of

Great Britain.  Matters of antiquity are not my inquiry, but

principally observations on the present state of things, and, if

possible, to give such accounts of things worthy of recording as

have never been observed before; and this leads me the more

directly to mention the commerce and the navigation when I come to

towns upon the coast as what few writers have yet meddled with.



The reason of the dangers of this particular coast are found in the

situation of the county and in the course of ships sailing this

way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:- The shore from

the mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roads lies in a

straight line from SSE. TO NNW., the land being on the W. or

larboard side.



From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point of land in

the county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyond Yarmouth, the

shore falls off for nearly sixty miles to the west, as far as Lynn

and Boston, till the shore of Lincolnshire tends north again for

about sixty miles more as far as the Humber, whence the coast of

Yorkshire, or Holderness, which is the east riding, shoots out

again into the sea, to the Spurn and to Flamborough Head, as far

east, almost, as the shore of Norfolk had given back at Winterton,

making a very deep gulf or bay between those two points of

Winterton and the Spurn Head; so that the ships going north are

obliged to stretch away to sea from Wintertonness, and leaving the

sight of land in that deep bay which I have mentioned, that reaches

to Lynn and the shore of Lincolnshire, they go, I say, N. or still

NNW. to meet the shore of Holderness, which I said runs out into

the sea again at the Spurn; and the first land they make or desire

to make, is called as above, Flamborough Head, so that

Wintertonness and Flamborough Head are the two extremes of this

course, there is, as I said, the Spurn Head indeed between; but as

it lies too far in towards the Humber, they keep out to the north

to avoid coming near it.



In like manner the ships which come from the north, leave the shore

at Flamborough Head, and stretch away SSE. for Yarmouth Roads; and

they first land they make is Wintertonness (as above).  Now, the

danger of the place is this: if the ships coming from the north are

taken with a hard gale of wind from the SE., or from any point

between NE. and SE., so that they cannot, as the seamen call it,

weather Wintertonness, they are thereby kept within that deep bay;

and if the wind blows hard, are often in danger of running on shore

upon the rocks about Cromer, on the north coast of Norfolk, or

stranding upon the flat shore between Cromer and Wells; all the

relief they have, is good ground tackle to ride it out, which is

very hard to do there, the sea coming very high upon them; or if

they cannot ride it out then, to run into the bottom of the great

bay I mentioned, to Lynn or Boston, which is a very difficult and

desperate push: so that sometimes in this distress whole fleets

have been lost here altogether.



The like is the danger to ships going northward, if after passing

by Winterton they are taken short with a north-east wind, and

cannot put back into the Roads, which very often happens, then they

are driven upon the same coast, and embayed just as the latter.

The danger on the north part of this bay is not the same, because

if ships going or coming should be taken short on this side

Flamborough, there is the river Humber open to them, and several

good roads to have recourse to, as Burlington Bay, Grimsby Road,

and the Spurn Head, and others, where they ride under shelter.



The dangers of this place being thus considered, it is no wonder,

that upon the shore beyond Yarmouth there are no less than four

lighthouses kept flaming every night, besides the lights at Castor,

north of the town, and at Goulston S., all of which are to direct

the sailors to keep a good offing in case of bad weather, and to

prevent their running into Cromer Bay, which the seamen call the

devil's throat.



As I went by land from Yarmouth northward, along the shore towards

Cromer aforesaid, and was not then fully master of the reason of

these things, I was surprised to see, in all the way from

Winterton, that the farmers and country people had scarce a barn,

or a shed, or a stable, nay, not the pales of their yards and

gardens, not a hogstye, not a necessary house, but what was built

of old planks, beams, wales, and timbers, etc., the wrecks of

ships, and ruins of mariners' and merchants' fortunes; and in some

places were whole yards filled and piled up very high with the same

stuff laid up, as I supposed to sell for the like building

purposes, as there should he occasion.



About the year 1692 (I think it was that year) there was a

melancholy example of what I have said of this place: a fleet of

200 sail of light colliers (so they call the ships bound northward

empty to fetch coals from Newcastle to London) went out of Yarmouth

Roads with a fair wind, to pursue their voyage, and were taken

short with a storm of wind at NE. after they were past

Wintertonness, a few leagues; some of them, whose masters were a

little more wary than the rest, or perhaps, who made a better

judgment of things, or who were not so far out as the rest, tacked,

and put back in time, and got safe into the roads; but the rest

pushing on in hopes to keep out to sea, and weather it, were by the

violence of the storm driven back, when they were too far embayed

to weather Wintertonness as above, and so were forced to run west,

everyone shifting for themselves as well as they could; some run

away for Lynn Deeps, but few of them (the night being so dark)

could find their way in there; some, but very few, rode it out at a

distance; the rest, being above 140 sail, were all driven on shore

and dashed to pieces, and very few of the people on board were

saved: at the very same unhappy juncture, a fleet of laden ships

were coming from the north, and being just crossing the same bay,

were forcibly driven into it, not able to weather the Ness, and so

were involved in the same ruin as the light fleet was; also some

coasting vessels laden with corn from Lynn and Wells, and bound for

Holland, were with the same unhappy luck just come out to begin

their voyage, and some of them lay at anchor; these also met with

the same misfortune, so that, in the whole, above 200 sail of

ships, and above a thousand people, perished in the disaster of

that one miserable night, very few escaping.



Cromer is a market town close to the shore of this dangerous coast.

I know nothing it is famous for (besides it being thus the terror

of the sailors) except good lobsters, which are taken on that coast

in great numbers and carried to Norwich, and in such quantities

sometimes too as to be conveyed by sea to London.



Farther within the land, and between this place and Norwich, are

several good market towns, and innumerable villages, all diligently

applying to the woollen manufacture, and the country is exceedingly

fruitful and fertile, as well in corn as in pastures; particularly,

which was very pleasant to see, the pheasants were in such great

plenty as to be seen in the stubbles like cocks and hens - a

testimony though, by the way, that the county had more tradesmen

than gentlemen in it; indeed, this part is so entirely given up to

industry, that what with the seafaring men on the one side, and the

manufactures on the other, we saw no idle hands here, but every man

busy on the main affair of life, that is to say, getting money;

some of the principal of these towns are:- Alsham, North Walsham,

South Walsham, Worsted, Caston, Reepham, Holt, Saxthorp, St.

Faith's, Blikling, and many others.  Near the last, Sir John

Hobart, of an ancient family in this county, has a noble seat, but

old built.  This is that St. Faith's, where the drovers bring their

black cattle to sell to the Norfolk graziers, as is observed above.



From Cromer we ride on the strand or open shore to Weyburn Hope,

the shore so flat that in some places the tide ebbs out near two

miles.  From Weyburn west lies Clye, where there are large salt-

works and very good salt made, which is sold all over the county,

and sometimes sent to Holland and to the Baltic.  From Clye we go

to Masham and to Wells, all towns on the coast, in each whereof

there is a very considerable trade carried on with Holland for

corn, which that part of the county is very full of.  I say nothing

of the great trade driven here from Holland, back again to England,

because I take it to be a trade carried on with much less honesty

than advantage, especially while the clandestine trade, or the art

of smuggling was so much in practice: what it is now, is not to my

present purpose.



Near this town lie The Seven Burnhams, as they are called, that is

to say, seven small towns, all called by the same name, and each

employed in the same trade of carrying corn to Holland, and

bringing back, - etc.



From hence we turn to the south-west to Castle Rising, an old

decayed borough town, with perhaps not ten families in it, which

yet (to the scandal of our prescription right) sends two members to

the British Parliament, being as many as the City of Norwich itself

or any town in the kingdom, London excepted, can do.



On our left we see Walsingham, an ancient town, famous for the old

ruins of a monastery of note there, and the Shrine of our Lady, as

noted as that of St. Thomas-e-Becket at Canterbury, and for little

else.



Near this place are the seats of the two allied families of the

Lord Viscount Townsend and Robert Walpole, Esq.; the latter at this

time one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and Minister of

State, and the former one of the principal Secretaries of State to

King George, of which again.



From hence we went to Lynn, another rich and populous thriving

port-town.  It stands on more ground than the town of Yarmouth, and

has, I think, parishes, yet I cannot allow that it has more people

than Yarmouth, if so many.  It is a beautiful, well built, and well

situated town, at the mouth of the River Ouse, and has this

particular attending it, which gives it a vast advantage in trade;

namely, that there is the greatest extent of inland navigation here

of any port in England, London excepted.  The reason whereof is

this, that there are more navigable rivers empty themselves here

into the sea, including the washes, which are branches of the same

port, than at any one mouth of waters in England, except the Thames

and the Humber.  By these navigable rivers, the merchants of Lynn

supply about six counties wholly, and three counties in part, with

their goods, especially wine and coals, viz., by the little Ouse,

they send their goods to Brandon and Thetford, by the Lake to

Mildenhall, Barton Mills, and St. Edmundsbury; by the River Grant

to Cambridge, by the great Ouse itself to Ely, to St. Ives, to St.

Neots, to Barford Bridge, and to Bedford; by the River Nyne to

Peterborough; by the drains and washes to Wisbeach, to Spalding,

Market Deeping, and Stamford; besides the several counties, into

which these goods are carried by land-carriage, from the places,

where the navigation of those rivers end; which has given rise to

this observation on the town of Lynn, that they bring in more coals

than any sea-port between London and Newcastle; and import more

wines than any port in England, except London and Bristol; their

trade to Norway and to the Baltic Sea is also great in proportion,

and of late years they have extended their trade farther to the

southward.



Here are more gentry, and consequently is more gaiety in this town

than in Yarmouth, or even in Norwich itself - the place abounding

in very good company.



The situation of this town renders it capable of being made very

strong, and in the late wars it was so; a line of fortification

being drawn round it at a distance from the walls; the ruins, or

rather remains of which works appear very fair to this day; nor

would it be a hard matter to restore the bastions, with the

ravelins, and counterscarp, upon any sudden emergency, to a good

state of defence: and that in a little time, a sufficient number of

workmen being employed, especially because they are able to fill

all their ditches with water from the sea, in such a manner as that

it cannot be drawn off.



There is in the market-place of this town a very fine statue of

King William on horseback, erected at the charge of the town.  The

Ouse is mighty large and deep, close to the very town itself, and

ships of good burthen may come up to the quay; but there is no

bridge, the stream being too strong and the bottom moorish and

unsound; nor, for the same reason, is the anchorage computed the

best in the world; but there are good roads farther down.



They pass over here in boats into the fen country, and over the

famous washes into Lincolnshire, but the passage is very dangerous

and uneasy, and where passengers often miscarry and are lost; but

then it is usually on their venturing at improper times, and

without the guides, which if they would be persuaded not to do,

they would very rarely fail of going or coming safe.



From Lynn I bent my course to Downham, where is an ugly wooden

bridge over the Ouse; from whence we passed the fen country to

Wisbeach, but saw nothing that way to tempt our curiosity but deep

roads, innumerable drains and dykes of water, all navigable, and a

rich soil, the land bearing a vast quantity of good hemp, but a

base unwholesome air; so we came back to Ely, whose cathedral,

standing in a level flat country, is seen far and wide, and of

which town, when the minster, so they call it, is described,

everything remarkable is said that there is room to say.  And of

the minster, this is the most remarkable thing that I could hear

it, namely, that some of it is so ancient, totters so much with

every gust of wind, looks so like a decay, and seems so near it,

that whenever it does fall, all that it is likely will be thought

strange in it will be that it did not fall a hundred years sooner.



From hence we came over the Ouse, and in a few miles to Newmarket.

In our way, near Snaybell, we saw a noble seat of the late Admiral

Russell, now Earl of Orford, a name made famous by the glorious

victory obtained under his command over the French fleet and the

burning their ships at La Hogue - a victory equal in glory to, and

infinitely more glorious to the English nation in particular, than

that at Blenheim, and, above all, more to the particular advantage

of the confederacy, because it so broke the heart of the naval

power of France that they have not fully recovered it to this day.

But of this victory it must be said it was owing to the haughty,

rash, and insolent orders given by the King of France to his

admiral, viz., to fight the confederate fleet wherever he found

them, without leaving room for him to use due caution if he found

them too strong, which pride of France was doubtless a fate upon

them, and gave a cheap victory to the confederates, the French

coming down rashly, and with the most impolitic bravery, with about

five-and-forty sail to attack between seventy and eighty sail, by

which means they met their ruin.  Whereas, had their own fleet been

joined, it might have cost more blood to have mastered them if it

had been done at all.



The situation of this house is low, and on the edge of the fen

country, but the building is very fine, the avenues noble, and the

gardens perfectly finished.  The apartments also are rich, and I

see nothing wanting but a family and heirs to sustain the glory and

inheritance of the illustrious ancestor who raised it - SED CARET

PEDIBUS; these are wanting.



Being come to Newmarket in the month of October, I had the

opportunity to see the horse races and a great concourse of the

nobility and gentry, as well from London as from all parts of

England, but they were all so intent, so eager, so busy upon the

sharping part of the sport - their wagers and bets - that to me

they seemed just as so many horse-coursers in Smithfield,

descending (the greatest of them) from their high dignity and

quality to picking one another's pockets, and biting one another as

much as possible, and that with such eagerness as that it might be

said they acted without respect to faith, honour, or good manners.



There was Mr. Frampton the oldest, and, as some say, the cunningest

jockey in England; one day he lost one thousand guineas, the next

he won two thousand; and so alternately he made as light of

throwing away five hundred or one thousand pounds at a time as

other men do of their pocket-money, and as perfectly calm,

cheerful, and unconcerned when he had lost one thousand pounds as

when he had won it.  On the other side there was Sir R Fagg, of

Sussex, of whom fame says he has the most in him and the least to

show for it (relating to jockeyship) of any man there, yet he often

carried the prize.  His horses, they said, were all cheats, how

honest soever their master was, for he scarce ever produced a horse

but he looked like what he was not, and was what nobody could

expect him to be.  If he was as light as the wind, and could fly

like a meteor, he was sure to look as clumsy, and as dirty, and as

much like a cart-horse as all the cunning of his master and the

grooms could make him, and just in this manner he beat some of the

greatest gamesters in the field.



I was so sick of the jockeying part that I left the crowd about the

posts and pleased myself with observing the horses: how the

creatures yielded to all the arts and managements of their masters;

how they took their airings in sport, and played with the daily

heats which they ran over the course before the grand day.  But

how, as knowing the difference equally with their riders, would

they exert their utmost strength at the time of the race itself!

And that to such an extremity that one or two of them died in the

stable when they came to be rubbed after the first heat.



Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus at Rome seeing the

ancient games and the racings of the chariots and horsemen, and in

this warmth of my imagination I pleased and diverted myself more

and in a more noble manner than I could possibly do in the crowds

of gentlemen at the weighing and starting-posts and at their coming

in, or at their meetings at the coffee-houses and gaming-tables

after the races were over, where there was little or nothing to be

seen but what was the subject of just reproach to them and reproof

from every wise man that looked upon them.



N.B. - Pray take it with you, as you go, you see no ladies at

Newmarket, except a few of the neighbouring gentlemen's families,

who come in their coaches on any particular day to see a race, and

so go home again directly.



As I was pleasing myself with what was to be seen here, I went in

the intervals of the sport to see the fine seats of the gentlemen

in the neighbouring county, for this part of Suffolk, being an open

champaign country and a healthy air, is formed for pleasure and all

kinds of country diversion, Nature, as it were, inviting the

gentlemen to visit her where she was fully prepared to receive

them, in conformity to which kind summons they came, for the

country is, as it were, covered with fine palaces of the nobility

and pleasant seats of the gentlemen.



The Earl of Orford's house I have mentioned already; the next is

Euston Hall, the seat of the Duke of Grafton.  It lies in the open

country towards the side of Norfolk, not far from Thetford, a place

capable of all that is pleasant and delightful in Nature, and

improved by art to every extreme that Nature is able to produce.



From thence I went to Rushbrook, formerly the seat of the noble

family of Jermyns, lately Lord Dover, and now of the house of

Davers.  Here Nature, for the time I was there, drooped and veiled

all the beauties of which she once boasted, the family being in

tears and the house shut up, Sir Robert Davers, the head thereof,

and knight of the shire for the county of Suffolk, and who had

married the eldest daughter of the late Lord Dover, being just

dead, and the corpse lying there in its funeral form of ceremony,

not yet buried.  Yet all looked lovely in their sorrow, and a

numerous issue promising and grown up intimated that the family of

Davers would still flourish, and that the beauties of Rushbrook,

the mansion of the family, were not formed with so much art in vain

or to die with the present possessor.



After this we saw Brently, the seat of the Earl of Dysert, and the

ancient palace of my Lord Cornwallis, with several others of

exquisite situation, and adorned with the beauties both of art and

Nature, so that I think any traveller from abroad, who would desire

to see how the English gentry live, and what pleasures they enjoy,

should come into Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and take but a light

circuit among the country seats of the gentlemen on this side only,

and they would be soon convinced that not France, no, not Italy

itself, can outdo them in proportion to the climate they lived in.



I had still the county of Cambridge to visit to complete this tour

of the eastern part of England, and of that I come now to speak.



We enter Cambridgeshire out of Suffolk, with all the advantage in

the world; the county beginning upon those pleasant and agreeable

plains called Newmarket Heath, where passing the Devil's Ditch,

which has nothing worth notice but its name, and that but fabulous

too, from the hills called Gogmagog, we see a rich and pleasant

vale westward, covered with corn-fields, gentlemen's seats,

villages, and at a distance, to crown all the rest, that ancient

and truly famous town and university of Cambridge, capital of the

county, and receiving its name from, if not, as some say, giving

name to it; for if it be true that the town takes its name of

Cambridge from its bridge over the river Cam, then certainly the

shire or county, upon the division of England into counties, had

its name from the town, and Cambridgeshire signifies no more or

less than the county of which Cambridge is the capital town.



As my business is not to lay out the geographical situation of

places, I say nothing of the buttings and boundings of this county.

It lies on the edge of the great level, called by the people here

the Fen Country; and great part, if not all, the Isle of Ely lies

in this county and Norfolk.  The rest of Cambridgeshire is almost

wholly a corn country, and of that corn five parts in six of all

they sow is barley, which is generally sold to Ware and Royston,

and other great malting towns in Hertfordshire, and is the fund

from whence that vast quantity of malt, called Hertfordshire malt,

is made, which is esteemed the best in England.  As Essex, Suffolk,

and Norfolk are taken up in manufactures, and famed for industry,

this county has no manufacture at all; nor are the poor, except the

husbandmen, famed for anything so much as idleness and sloth, to

their scandal be it spoken.  What the reason of it is I know not.



It is scarce possible to talk of anything in Cambridgeshire but

Cambridge itself; whether it be that the county has so little worth

speaking of in it, or, that the town has so much, that I leave to

others; however, as I am making modern observations, not writing

history, I shall look into the county, as well as into the

colleges, for what I have to say.



As I said, I first had a view of Cambridge from Gogmagog hills; I

am to add that there appears on the mountain that goes by this

name, an ancient camp or fortification, that lies on the top of the

hill, with a double, or rather treble, rampart and ditch, which

most of our writers say was neither Roman nor Saxon, but British.

I am to add that King James II. caused a spacious stable to be

built in the area of this camp for his running homes, and made old

Mr. Frampton, whom I mentioned above, master or inspector of them.

The stables remain still there, though they are not often made use

of.  As we descended westward we saw the Fen country on our right,

almost all covered with water like a sea, the Michaelmas rains

having been very great that year, they had sent down great floods

of water from the upland countries, and those fens being, as may be

very properly said, the sink of no less than thirteen counties -

that is to say, that all the water, or most part of the water, of

thirteen counties falls into them; they are often thus overflowed.

The rivers which thus empty themselves into these fens, and which

thus carry off the water, are the Cam or Grant, the Great Ouse and

Little Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the river which runs from

Bury to Milden Hall.  The counties which these rivers drain, as

above, are as follows:-





Lincoln, Warwick, Norfolk,

* Cambridge, Oxford, Suffolk,

* Huntingdon, Leicester, Essex,

* Bedford, * Northampton

Buckingham, * Rutland.



Those marked with (*) empty all their waters this way, the rest but

in part.





In a word, all the water of the middle part of England which does

not run into the Thames or the Trent, comes down into these fens.



In these fens are abundance of those admirable pieces of art called

decoys that is to say, places so adapted for the harbour and

shelter of wild fowl, and then furnished with a breed of those they

call decoy ducks, who are taught to allure and entice their kind to

the places they belong to, that it is incredible what quantities of

wild fowl of all sorts, duck, mallard, teal, widgeon, &c., they

take in those decoys every week during the season; it may, indeed,

be guessed at a little by this, that there is a decoy not far from

Ely which pays to the landlord, Sir Thomas Hare, 500 pounds a year

rent, besides the charge of maintaining a great number of servants

for the management; and from which decoy alone, they assured me at

St. Ives (a town on the Ouse, where the fowl they took was always

brought to be sent to London) that they generally sent up three

thousand couple a week.



There are more of these about Peterborough, who send the fowl up

twice a week in waggon-loads at a time, whose waggons before the

late Act of Parliament to regulate carriers I have seen drawn by

ten and twelve horses a-piece, they were laden so heavy.



As these fens appear covered with water, so I observed, too, that

they generally at this latter part of the year appear also covered

with fogs, so that when the downs and higher grounds of the

adjacent country were gilded with the beams of the sun, the Isle of

Ely looked as if wrapped up in blankets, and nothing to be seen but

now and then the lantern or cupola of Ely Minster.



One could hardly see this from the hills and not pity the many

thousands of families that were bound to or confined in those fogs,

and had no other breath to draw than what must be mixed with those

vapours, and that steam which so universally overspreads the

country.  But notwithstanding this, the people, especially those

that are used to it, live unconcerned, and as healthy as other

folks, except now and then an ague, which they make light of, and

there are great numbers of very ancient people among them.



I now draw near to Cambridge, to which I fancy I look as if I was

afraid to come, having made so many circumlocutions beforehand; but

I must yet make another digression before I enter the town (for in

my way, and as I came in from Newmarket, about the beginning of

September), I cannot omit, that I came necessarily through

Stourbridge Fair, which was then in its height.



If it is a diversion worthy a book to treat of trifles, such as the

gaiety of Bury Fair, it cannot be very unpleasant, especially to

the trading part of the world, to say something of this fair, which

is not only the greatest in the whole nation, but in the world;

nor, if I may believe those who have seen the mall, is the fair at

Leipzig in Saxony, the mart at Frankfort-on-the-Main, or the fairs

at Nuremberg, or Augsburg, any way to compare to this fair at

Stourbridge.



It is kept in a large corn-field, near Casterton, extending from

the side of the river Cam, towards the road, for about half a mile

square.



If the husbandmen who rent the land, do not get their corn off

before a certain day in August, the fair-keepers may trample it

under foot and spoil it to build their booths, or tents, for all

the fair is kept in tents and booths.  On the other hand, to

balance that severity, if the fair-keepers have not done their

business of the fair, and removed and cleared the field by another

certain day in September, the ploughmen may come in again, with

plough and cart, and overthrow all, and trample into the dirt; and

as for the filth, dung, straw, etc. necessarily left by the fair-

keepers, the quantity of which is very great, it is the farmers'

fees, and makes them full amends for the trampling, riding, and

carting upon, and hardening the ground.



It is impossible to describe all the parts and circumstances of

this fair exactly; the shops are placed in rows like streets,

whereof one is called Cheapside; and here, as in several other

streets, are all sorts of trades, who sell by retail, and who come

principally from London with their goods; scarce any trades are

omitted - goldsmiths, toyshops, brasiers, turners, milliners,

haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china-

warehouses, and in a word all trades that can be named in London;

with coffee-houses, taverns, brandy-shops, and eating-houses,

innumerable, and all in tents, and booths, as above.



This great street reaches from the road, which as I said goes from

Cambridge to Newmarket, turning short out of it to the right

towards the river, and holds in a line near half a mile quite down

to the river-side: in another street parallel with the road are

like rows of booths, but larger, and more intermingled with

wholesale dealers; and one side, passing out of this last street to

the left hand, is a formal great square, formed by the largest

booths, built in that form, and which they call the Duddery; whence

the name is derived, and what its signification is, I could never

yet learn, though I made all possible search into it.  The area of

this square is about 80 to 100 yards, where the dealers have room

before every booth to take down, and open their packs, and to bring

in waggons to load and unload.



This place is separated, and peculiar to the wholesale dealers in

the woollen manufacture.  Here the booths or tents are of a vast

extent, have different apartments, and the quantities of goods they

bring are so great, that the insides of them look like another

Blackwell Hall, being as vast warehouses piled up with goods to the

top.  In this Duddery, as I have been informed, there have been

sold one hundred thousand pounds worth of woollen manufactures in

less than a week's time, besides the prodigious trade carried on

here, by wholesale men, from London, and all parts of England, who

transact their business wholly in their pocket-books, and meeting

their chapmen from all parts, make up their accounts, receive money

chiefly in bills, and take orders: These they say exceed by far the

sales of goods actually brought to the fair, and delivered in kind;

it being frequent for the London wholesale men to carry back orders

from their dealers for ten thousand pounds' worth of goods a man,

and some much more.  This especially respects those people, who

deal in heavy goods, as wholesale grocers, salters, brasiers, iron-

merchants, wine-merchants, and the like; but does not exclude the

dealers in woollen manufactures, and especially in mercery goods of

all sorts, the dealers in which generally manage their business in

this manner.



Here are clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield and Huddersfield

in Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, etc., in Lancashire, with

vast quantities of Yorkshire cloths, kerseys, pennistons, cottons,

etc., with all sorts of Manchester ware, fustiains, and things made

of cotton wool; of which the quantity is so great, that they told

me there were near a thousand horse-packs of such goods from that

side of the country, and these took up a side and half of the

Duddery at least; also a part of a street of booths were taken up

with upholsterer's ware, such as tickings, sackings, kidderminster

stuffs, blankets, rugs, quilts, etc.



In the Duddery I saw one warehouse, or booth with six apartments in

it, all belonging to a dealer in Norwich stuffs only, and who, they

said, had there above twenty thousand pounds value in those goods,

and no other.



Western goods had their share here also, and several booths were

filled as full with serges, duroys, druggets, shalloons,

cantaloons, Devonshire kerseys, etc., from Exeter, Taunton,

Bristol, and other parts west, and some from London also.



But all this is still outdone at least in show, by two articles,

which are the peculiars of this fair, and do not begin till the

other part of the fair, that is to say for the woollen manufacture

begins to draw to a close.  These are the wool and the hops; as for

the hops, there is scarce any price fixed for hops in England, till

they know how they sell at Stourbridge fair; the quantity that

appears in the fair is indeed prodigious, and they, as it were,

possess a large part of the field on which the fair is kept to

themselves; they are brought directly from Chelmsford in Essex,

from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent, and from Farnham in Surrey,

besides what are brought from London, the growth of those and other

places.



Enquiring why this fair should be thus, of all other places in

England, the centre of that trade; and so great a quantity of so

bulky a commodity be carried thither so far; I was answered by one

thoroughly acquainted with that matter thus: the hops, said he, for

this part of England, grow principally in the two counties of

Surrey and Kent, with an exception only to the town of Chelmsford

in Essex, and there are very few planted anywhere else.



There are indeed in the west of England some quantities growing: as

at Wilton, near Salisbury; at Hereford and Broomsgrove, near Wales,

and the like; but the quantity is inconsiderable, and the places

remote, so that none of them come to London.



As to the north of England, they formerly used but few hops there,

their drink being chiefly pale smooth ale, which required no hops,

and consequently they planted no hops in all that part of England,

north of the Trent; nor did I ever see one acre of hop-ground

planted beyond Trent in my observation; but as for some years past,

they not only brew great quantities of beer in the north, but also

use hops in the brewing their ale much more than they did before;

so they all come south of Trent to buy their hops; and here being

quantities brought, it is great part of their back carriage into

Yorkshire, and Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and all

these counties; nay, of late, since the Union, even to Scotland

itself; for I must not omit here also to mention, that the river

Grant, or Cam, which runs close by the north-west side of the fair

in its way from Cambridge to Ely, is navigable, and that by this

means, all heavy goods are brought even to the fair-field, by water

carriage from London and other parts; first to the port of Lynn,

and then in barges up the Ouse, from the Ouse into the Cam, and so,

as I say, to the very edge of the fair.



In like manner great quantities of heavy goods, and the hops among

the rest, are sent from the fair to Lynn by water, and shipped

there for the Humber, to Hull, York, etc., and for Newcastle-upon-

Tyne, and by Newcastle, even to Scotland itself.  Now as there is

still no planting of hops in the north, though a great consumption,

and the consumption increasing daily, this, says my friend, is one

reason why at Stourbridge fair there is so great a demand for the

hops.  He added, that besides this, there were very few hops, if

any worth naming, growing in all the counties even on this side

Trent, which were above forty miles from London; those counties

depending on Stourbridge fair for their supply, so the counties of

Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, Lincoln,

Leicester, Rutland, and even to Stafford, Warwick, and

Worcestershire, bought most if not all of their hops at Stourbridge

fair.



These are the reasons why so great a quantity of hops are seen at

this fair, as that it is incredible, considering, too, how remote

from this fair the growth of them is as above.



This is likewise a testimony of the prodigious resort of the

trading people of all parts of England to this fair; the quantity

of hops that have been sold at one of these fairs is diversely

reported, and some affirm it to be so great, that I dare not copy

after them; but without doubt it is a surprising account,

especially in a cheap year.



The next article brought thither is wool, and this of several

sorts, but principally fleece wool, out of Lincolnshire, where the

longest staple is found; the sheep of those countries being of the

largest breed.



The buyers of this wool are chiefly indeed the manufacturers of

Norfolk and Suffolk and Essex, and it is a prodigious quantity they

buy.



Here I saw what I have not observed in any other county of England,

namely, a pocket of wool.  This seems to be first called so in

mockery, this pocket being so big, that it loads a whole waggon,

and reaches beyond the most extreme parts of it hanging over both

before and behind, and these ordinarily weigh a ton or twenty-five

hundredweight of wool, all in one bag.



The quantity of wool only, which has been sold at this place at one

fair, has been said to amount to fifty or sixty thousand pounds in

value, some say a great deal more.



By these articles a stranger may make some guess at the immense

trade carried on at this place; what prodigious quantities of goods

are bought and sold here, and what a confluence of people are seen

here from all parts of England.



I might go on here to speak of several other sorts of English

manufactures which are brought hither to be sold; as all sorts of

wrought-iron and brass-ware from Birmingham; edged tools, knives,

etc., from Sheffield; glass wares and stockings from Nottingham and

Leicester; and an infinite throng of other things of smaller value

every morning.



To attend this fair, and the prodigious conflux of people which

come to it, there are sometimes no less than fifty hackney coaches

which come from London, and ply night and morning to carry the

people to and from Cambridge; for there the gross of the people

lodge; nay, which is still more strange, there are wherries brought

from London on waggons to ply upon the little river Cam, and to row

people up and down from the town, and from the fair as occasion

presents.



It is not to be wondered at, if the town of Cambridge cannot

receive, or entertain the numbers of people that come to this fair;

not Cambridge only, but all the towns round are full; nay, the very

barns and stables are turned into inns, and made as fit as they can

to lodge the meaner sort of people: as for the people in the fair,

they all universally eat, drink, and sleep in their booths and

tents; and the said booths are so intermingled with taverns,

coffee-houses, drinking-houses, eating-houses, cook-shops, etc.,

and all in tents too; and so many butchers and higglers from all

the neighbouring counties come into the fair every morning with

beef, mutton, fowls, butter, bread, cheese, eggs, and such things,

and go with them from tent to tent, from door to door, that there

is no want of any provisions of any kind, either dressed or

undressed.



In a word, the fair is like a well-fortified city, and there is the

least disorder and confusion I believe, that can be seen anywhere

with so great a concourse of people.



Towards the latter end of the fair, and when the great hurry of

wholesale business begins to be over, the gentry come in from all

parts of the county round; and though they come for their

diversion, yet it is not a little money they lay out, which

generally falls to the share of the retailers, such as toy-shops,

goldsmiths, braziers, ironmongers, turners, milliners, mercers,

etc., and some loose coins they reserve for the puppet shows,

drolls, rope-dancers, and such like, of which there is no want,

though not considerable like the rest.  The last day of the fair is

the horse-fair, where the whole is closed with both horse and foot

races, to divert the meaner sort of people only, for nothing

considerable is offered of that kind.  Thus ends the whole fair,

and in less than a week more, there is scarce any sign left that

there has been such a thing there, except by the heaps of dung and

straw and other rubbish which is left behind, trod into the earth,

and which is as good as a summer's fallow for dunging the land; and

as I have said above, pays the husbandman well for the use of it.



I should have mentioned that here is a court of justice always

open, and held every day in a shed built on purpose in the fair;

this is for keeping the peace, and deciding controversies in

matters deriving from the business of the fair.  The magistrates of

the town of Cambridge are judges in this court, as being in their

jurisdiction, or they holding it by special privilege: here they

determine matters in a summary way, as is practised in those we

call Pye Powder Courts in other places, or as a Court of

Conscience; and they have a final authority without appeal.



I come now to the town and university of Cambridge; I say the town

and university, for though they are blended together in the

situation, and the colleges, halls, and houses for literature are

promiscuously scattered up and down among the other parts, and some

even among the meanest of the other buildings, as Magdalene College

over the bridge is in particular; yet they are all incorporated

together by the name of the university, and are governed apart and

distinct from the town which they are so intermixed with.



As their authority is distinct from the town, so are their

privileges, customs, and government; they choose representatives,

or members of Parliament for themselves, and the town does the like

for themselves, also apart.



The town is governed by a mayor and aldermen; the university by a

chancellor, and vice-chancellor, etc.  Though their dwellings are

mixed, and seem a little confused, their authority is not so; in

some cases the vice-chancellor may concern himself in the town, as

in searching houses for the scholars at improper hours, removing

scandalous women, and the like.



But as the colleges are many, and the gentlemen entertained in them

are a very great number, the trade of the town very much depends

upon them, and the tradesmen may justly be said to get their bread

by the colleges; and this is the surest hold the university may be

said to have of the townsmen, and by which they secure the

dependence of the town upon them, and consequently their

submission.



I remember some years ago a brewer, who being very rich and popular

in the town, and one of their magistrates, had in several things so

much opposed the university, and insulted their vice-chancellor, or

other heads of houses, that in short the university having no other

way to exert themselves, and show their resentment, they made a

bye-law or order among themselves, that for the future they would

not trade with him; and that none of the colleges, halls, etc.,

would take any more beer of him; and what followed?  The man indeed

braved it out a while, but when he found he could not obtain a

revocation of the order, he was fain to leave off his brewhouse,

and if I remember right, quitted the town.



Thus I say, interest gives them authority; and there are abundance

of reasons why the town should not disoblige the university, as

there are some also on the other hand, why the university should

not differ to any extremity with the town; nor, such is their

prudence, do they let any disputes between them run up to any

extremities if they can avoid it.  As for society; to any man who

is a lover of learning, or of learned men, here is the most

agreeable under heaven; nor is there any want of mirth and good

company of other kinds; but it is to the honour of the university

to say, that the governors so well understand their office, and the

governed their duty, that here is very little encouragement given

to those seminaries of crime, the assemblies, which are so much

boasted of in other places.



Again, as dancing, gaming, intriguing are the three principal

articles which recommend those assemblies; and that generally the

time for carrying on affairs of this kind is the night, and

sometimes all night, a time as unseasonable as scandalous; add to

this, that the orders of the university admit no such excesses; I

therefore say, as this is the case, it is to the honour of the

whole body of the university that no encouragement is given to them

here.



As to the antiquity of the university in this town, the originals

and founders of the several colleges, their revenues, laws,

government, and governors, they are so effectually and so largely

treated of by other authors, and are so foreign to the familiar

design of these letters, that I refer my readers to Mr. Camden's

"Britannia" and the author of the "Antiquities of Cambridge," and

other such learned writers, by whom they may be fully informed.



The present Vice-Chancellor is Dr. Snape, formerly Master of Eaton

School near Windsor, and famous for his dispute with, and evident

advantage over, the late Bishop of Bangor in the time of his

government; the dispute between the University and the Master of

Trinity College has been brought to a head so as to employ the pens

of the learned on both sides, but at last prosecuted in a judicial

way so as to deprive Dr. Bentley of all his dignities and offices

in the university; but the doctor flying to the royal protection,

the university is under a writ of mandamus, to show cause why they

do not restore the doctor again, to which it seems they demur, and

that demur has not, that we hear, been argued, at least when these

sheets were sent to the press.  What will be the issue time must

show.



From Cambridge the road lies north-west on the edge of the fens to

Huntingdon, where it joins the great north road.  On this side it

is all an agreeable corn country as above, adorned with several

seats of gentlemen; but the chief is the noble house, seat, or

mansion of Wimple or Wimple Hall, formerly built at a vast expense

by the late Earl of Radnor, adorned with all the natural beauties

of situation, and to which was added all the most exquisite

contrivances which the best heads could invent to make it

artificially as well as naturally pleasant.



However, the fate of the Radnor family so directing, it was bought

with the whole estate about it by the late Duke of Newcastle, in a

partition of whose immense estate it fell to the Right Honourable

the Lord Harley, son and heir-apparent of the present Earl of

Oxford and Mortimer, in right of the Lady Harriet Cavendish, only

daughter of the said Duke of Newcastle, who is married to his

lordship, and brought him this estate and many other, sufficient to

denominate her the richest heiress in Great Britain.



Here his lordship resides, and has already so recommended himself

to this county as to be by a great majority chosen Knight of the

Shire for the county of Cambridge.



From Cambridge, my design obliging me, and the direct road in part

concurring, I came back through the west part of the county of

Essex, and at Saffron Walden I saw the ruins of the once largest

and most magnificent pile in all this part of England - viz.,

Audley End - built by, and decaying with, the noble Dukes and Earls

of Suffolk.



A little north of this part of the country rises the River Stour,

which for a course of fifty miles or more parts the two counties of

Suffolk and Essex, passing through or near Haveril, Clare,

Cavendish, Halsted, Sudbury, Bowers, Nayland, Stretford, Dedham,

Manningtree, and into the sea at Harwich, assisting by its waters

to make one of the best harbours for shipping that is in Great

Britain - I mean Orwell Haven or Harwich, of which I have spoken

largely already.



As we came on this side we saw at a distance Braintree and Bocking,

two towns, large, rich, and populous, and made so originally by the

bay trade, of which I have spoken at large at Colchester, and which

flourishes still among them.



The manor of Braintree I found descended by purchase to the name of

Olmeus, the son of a London merchant of the same name, making good

what I had observed before, of the great number of such who have

purchased estates in this county.



Near this town is Felsted, a small place, but noted for a free

school of an ancient foundation, for many years under the

mastership of the late Rev. Mr. Lydiat, and brought by him to the

meridian of its reputation.  It is now supplied, and that very

worthily, by the Rev. Mr. Hutchins.



Near to this is the Priory of Lees, a delicious seat of the late

Dukes of Manchester, but sold by the present Duke to the Duchess

Dowager of Bucks, his Grace the Duke of Manchester removing to his

yet finer seat of Kimbolton in Northamptonshire, the ancient

mansion of the family.  From hence keeping the London Road I came

to Chelmsford, mentioned before, and Ingerstone, five miles west,

which I mention again, because in the parish church of this town

are to be seen the ancient monuments of the noble family of Petre,

whose seat and large estate lie in the neighbourhood, and whose

whole family, by a constant series of beneficent actions to the

poor, and bounty upon all charitable occasions, have gained an

affectionate esteem through all that part of the country such as no

prejudice of religion could wear out, or perhaps ever may; and I

must confess, I think, need not, for good and great actions command

our respect, let the opinions of the persons be otherwise what they

will.



From hence we crossed the country to the great forest, called

Epping Forest, reaching almost to London.  The country on that side

of Essex is called the Roodings, I suppose, because there are no

less than ten towns almost together, called by the name of Roding,

and is famous for good land, good malt, and dirty roads; the latter

indeed in the winter are scarce passable for horse or man.  In the

midst of this we see Chipping Onger, Hatfield Broad Oak, Epping,

and many forest towns, famed as I have said for husbandry and good

malt, but of no other note.  On the south side of the county is

Waltham Abbey; the ruins of the abbey remain, and though antiquity

is not my proper business, I could not but observe that King

Harold, slain in the great battle in Sussex against William the

Conqueror, lies buried here; his body being begged by his mother,

the Conqueror allowed it to be carried hither; but no monument was,

as I can find, built for him, only a flat gravestone, on which was

engraven HAROLD INFELIX.



From hence I came over the forest again - that is to say, over the

lower or western part of it, where it is spangled with fine

villages, and these villages filled with fine seats, most of them

built by the citizens of London, as I observed before, but the

lustre of them seems to be entirely swallowed up in the magnificent

palace of the Lord Castlemain, whose father, Sir Josiah Child, as

it were, prepared it in his life for the design of his son, though

altogether unforeseen, by adding to the advantage of its situation

innumerable rows of trees, planted in curious order for avenues and

vistas to the house, all leading up to the place where the old

house stood, as to a centre.



In the place adjoining, his lordship, while he was yet Sir Richard

Child only, and some years before he began the foundation of his

new house, laid out the most delicious, as well as most spacious,

pieces of ground for gardens that is to be seen in all this part of

England.  The greenhouse is an excellent building, fit to entertain

a prince; it is furnished with stoves and artificial places for

heat from an apartment in which is a bagnio and other conveniences,

which render it both useful and pleasant.  And these gardens have

been so the just admiration of the world, that it has been the

general diversion of the citizens to go out to see them, till the

crowds grew too great, and his lordship was obliged to restrain his

servants from showing them, except on one or two days in a week

only.



The house is built since these gardens have been finished.  The

building is all of Portland stone in the front, which makes it look

extremely glorious and magnificent at a distance, it being the

particular property of that stone (except in the streets of London,

where it is tainted and tinged with the smoke of the city) to grow

whiter and whiter the longer it stands in the open air.



As the front of the house opens to a long row of trees, reaching to

the great road at Leightonstone, so the back face, or front (if

that be proper), respects the gardens, and, with an easy descent,

lands you upon the terrace, from whence is a most beautiful

prospect to the river, which is all formed into canals and openings

to answer the views from above and beyond the river; the walks and

wildernesses go on to such a distance, and in such a manner up the

hill, as they before went down, that the sight is lost in the woods

adjoining, and it looks all like one planted garden as far as the

eye can see.



I shall cover as much as possible the melancholy part of a story

which touches too sensibly many, if not most, of the great and

flourishing families in England.  Pity and matter of grief is it to

think that families, by estate able to appear in such a glorious

posture as this, should ever be vulnerable by so mean a disaster as

that of stock-jobbing.  But the general infatuation of the day is a

plea for it, so that men are not now blamed on that account.  South

Sea was a general possession, and if my Lord Castlemain was wounded

by that arrow shot in the dark it was a misfortune.  But it is so

much a happiness that it was not a mortal wound, as it was to some

men who once seemed as much out of the reach of it.  And that blow,

be it what it will, is not remembered for joy of the escape, for we

see this noble family, by prudence and management, rise out of all

that cloud, if it may be allowed such a name, and shining in the

same full lustre as before.



This cannot be said of some other families in this county, whose

fine parks and new-built palaces are fallen under forfeitures and

alienations by the misfortunes of the times and by the ruin of

their masters' fortunes in that South Sea deluge.



But I desire to throw a veil over these things as they come in my

way; it is enough that we write upon them, as was written upon King

Harold's tomb at Waltham Abbey, INFELIX, and let all the rest sleep

among things that are the fittest to be forgotten.



From my Lord Castlemain's, house and the rest of the fine dwellings

on that side of the forest, for there are several very good houses

at Wanstead, only that they seem all swallowed up in the lustre of

his lordship's palace, I say, from thence, I went south, towards

the great road over that part of the forest called the Flats, where

we see a very beautiful but retired and rural seat of Mr.

Lethulier's, eldest son of the late Sir John Lethulier, of Lusum,

in Kent, of whose family I shall speak when I come on that side.



By this turn I came necessarily on to Stratford, where I set out.

And thus having finished my first circuit, I conclude my first

letter, and am,



Sir, your most humble and obedient servant.







APPENDIX.







Whoever travels, as I do, over England, and writes the account of

his observations, will, as I noted before, always leave something,

altering or undertaking by such a growing improving nation as this,

or something to discover in a nation where so much is hid,

sufficient to employ the pens of those that come after him, or to

add by way of appendix to what he has already observed.



This is my case with respect to the particulars which follow: (1)

Since these sheets were in the press, a noble palace of Mr.

Walpole's, at present First Commissioner of the Treasury, Privy-

counsellor, etc., to King George, is, as it were, risen out of the

ruins of the ancient seat of the family of Walpole, at Houghton,

about eight miles distant from Lynn, and on the north coast of

Norfolk, near the sea.



As the house is not yet finished, and when I passed by it was but

newly designed, it cannot be expected that I should be able to give

a particular description of what it will be.  I can do little more

than mention that it appears already to be exceedingly magnificent,

and suitable to the genius of the great founder.



But a friend of mine, who lives in that county, has sent me the

following lines, which, as he says, are to be placed upon the

building, whether on the frieze of the cornice, or over the

portico, or on what part of the building, of that I am not as yet

certain.  The inscription is as follows, viz.:-





"H. M. F.



"Fundamen ut essem Domus

In Agro Natali Extruendae,

Robertus ille Walpole

Quem nulla nesciet Posteritas:



Faxit Dues.



"Postquam Maturus Annis Dominus.

Diu Laetatus fuerit absoluta

Incolumem tueantur Incolames.

Ad Summam omnium Diem

Et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis.



Hic me Posuit."





A second thing proper to be added here, by way of appendix, relates

to what I have mentioned of the Port of London, being bounded by

the Naze on the Essex shore, and the North Foreland on the Kentish

shore, which some people, guided by the present usage of the Custom

House, may pretend is not so, to answer such objectors.  The true

state of that case stands thus:



"(1)  The clause taken from the Act of Parliament establishing the

extent of the Port of London, and published in some of the books of

rates, is this:



"'To prevent all future differences and disputes touching the

extent and limits of the Port of London, the said port is declared

to extend, and be accounted from the promontory or point called the

North Foreland in the Isle of Thanet, and from thence northward in

a right line to the point called the Naze, beyond the Gunfleet upon

the coast of Essex, and so continued westward throughout the river

Thames, and the several channels, streams, and rivers falling into

it, to London Bridge, saving the usual and known rights, liberties,

and privileges of the ports of Sandwich and Ipswich, and either of

them, and the known members thereof, and of the customers,

comptrollers, searchers, and their deputies, of and within the said

ports of Sandwich and Ipswich and the several creeks, harbours, and

havens to them, or either of them, respectively belonging, within

the counties of Kent and Essex.'



"II.  Notwithstanding what is above written, the Port of London, as

in use since the said order, is understood to reach no farther than

Gravesend in Kent and Tilbury Point in Essex, and the ports of

Rochester, Milton, and Faversham belong to the port of Sandwich.



"In like manner the ports of Harwich, Colchester, Wivenhoe, Malden,

Leigh, etc., are said to be members of the port of Ipswich."



This observation may suffice for what is needful to be said upon

the same subject when I may come to speak of the port of Sandwich

and its members and their privileges with respect to Rochester,

Milton, Faversham, etc., in my circuit through the county of Kent.