M. S.
D. Johannis Holt, _Equitis Aur_.
_Totius Angliæ in Banco Regis_
_per_ 21 _Annos continuos_
Capitalis Justitiarii
_Gulielmo Regi Annæqur Reginæ_
_Consiliarii perpetui_:
_Libertatis ac Legum Anglicarum_
_Assertoris_, _Vindicis_, _Custodis_,
_Vigilis Acris & intrepidi_,
_Rolandus Frater Uncius & Hæres_
_Optime de se Merito_
_posuit_,
_Die Martis Vto_. 1709. _Sublatus est_
_ex Oculis nostris_
_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-à-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 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.