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 stock upon his farm
in cows only.