FROM LONDON TO LAND'S END

Sir,

I find so much left to speak of, and so many things to say in every part

of England, that my journey cannot be barren of intelligence which way

soever I turn; no, though I were to oblige myself to say nothing of

anything that had been spoken of before.

I intended once to have gone due west this journey; but then I should

have been obliged to crowd my observations so close (to bring Hampton

Court, Windsor, Blenheim, Oxford, the Bath and Bristol all into one

letter; all those remarkable places lying in a line, as it were, in one

point of the compass) as to have made my letter too long, or my

observations too light and superficial, as others have done before me.

This letter will divide the weighty task, and consequently make it sit

lighter on the memory, be pleasanter to the reader, and make my progress

the more regular: I shall therefore take in Hampton Court and Windsor in

this journey; the first at my setting out, and the last at my return, and

the rest as their situation demands.

As I came down from Kingston, in my last circuit, by the south bank of

the Thames, on the Surrey side of the river; so I go up to Hampton Court

now on the north bank, and on the Middlesex side, which I mention,

because, as the sides of the country bordering on the river lie parallel,

so the beauty of the country, the pleasant situations, the glory of

innumerable fine buildings (noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, and

citizens' retreats), are so equal a match to what I had described on the

other side that one knows not which to give the preference to: but as I

must speak of them again, when I come to write of the county of

Middlesex, which I have now purposely omitted; so I pass them over here,

except the palace of Hampton only, which I mentioned in "Middlesex," for

the reasons above.

Hampton Court lies on the north bank of the River Thames, about two small

miles from Kingston, and on the road from Staines to Kingston Bridge; so

that the road straightening the parks a little, they were obliged to part

the parks, and leave the Paddock and the great park part on the other

side the road--a testimony of that just regard that the kings of England

always had, and still have, to the common good, and to the service of the

country, that they would not interrupt the course of the road, or cause

the poor people to go out of the way of their business to or from the

markets and fairs, for any pleasure of their own whatsoever.

The palace of Hampton Court was first founded and built from the ground

by that great statesman and favourite of King Henry VIII, Cardinal

Wolsey; and if it be a just observation anywhere, as is made from the

situation of the old abbeys and monasteries, the clergy were excellent

judges of the beauty and pleasantness of the country, and chose always to

plant in the best; I say, if it was a just observation in any case, it

was in this; for if there be a situation on the whole river between

Staines Bridge and Windsor Bridge pleasanter than another, it is this of

Hampton; close to the river, yet not offended by the rising of its waters

in floods or storms; near to the reflux of the tides, but not quite so

near as to be affected with any foulness of the water which the flowing

of the tides generally is the occasion of. The gardens extend almost to

the bank of the river, yet are never overflowed; nor are there any

marshes on either side the river to make the waters stagnate, or the air

unwholesome on that account. The river is high enough to be navigable,

and low enough to be a little pleasantly rapid; so that the stream looks

always cheerful, not slow and sleeping, like a pond. This keeps the

waters always clear and clean, the bottom in view, the fish playing and

in sight; and, in a word, it has everything that can make an inland (or,

as I may call it, a country) river pleasant and agreeable.

I shall sing you no songs here of the river in the first person of a

water-nymph, a goddess, and I know not what, according to the humour of

the ancient poets; I shall talk nothing of the marriage of old Isis, the

male river, with the beautiful Thame, the female river (a whimsey as

simple as the subject was empty); but I shall speak of the river as

occasion presents, as it really is made glorious by the splendour of its

shores, gilded with noble palaces, strong fortifications, large

hospitals, and public buildings; with the greatest bridge, and the

greatest city in the world, made famous by the opulence of its merchants,

the increase and extensiveness of its commerce; by its invincible navies,

and by the innumerable fleets of ships sailing upon it to and from all

parts of the world.

As I meet with the river upwards in my travels through the inland country

I shall speak of it, as it is the channel for conveying an infinite

quantity of provisions from remote counties to London, and enriching all

the counties again that lie near it by the return of wealth and trade

from the city; and in describing these things I expect both to inform and

divert my readers, and speak in a more masculine manner, more to the

dignity of the subject, and also more to their satisfaction, than I could

do any other way.

There is little more to be said of the Thames relating to Hampton Court,

than that it adds by its neighbourhood to the pleasure of the situation;

for as to passing by water to and from London, though in summer it is

exceeding pleasant, yet the passage is a little too long to make it easy

to the ladies, especially to be crowded up in the small boats which

usually go upon the Thames for pleasure.

The prince and princess, indeed, I remember came once down by water upon

the occasion of her Royal Highness's being great with child, and near her

time--so near that she was delivered within two or three days after. But

this passage being in the royal barges, with strength of oars, and the

day exceeding fine, the passage, I say, was made very pleasant, and still

the more so for being short. Again, this passage is all the way with the

stream, whereas in the common passage upwards great part of the way is

against the stream, which is slow and heavy.

But be the going and coming how it will by water, it is an exceeding

pleasant passage by land, whether we go by the Surrey side or the

Middlesex side of the water, of which I shall say more in its place.

The situation of Hampton Court being thus mentioned, and its founder, it

is to be mentioned next that it fell to the Crown in the forfeiture of

his Eminence the Cardinal, when the king seized his effects and estate,

by which this and Whitehall (another house of his own building also) came

to King Henry VIII. Two palaces fit for the kings of England, erected by

one cardinal, are standing monuments of the excessive pride as well as

the immense wealth of that prelate, who knew no bounds of his insolence

and ambition till he was overthrown at once by the displeasure of his

master.

Whoever knew Hampton Court before it was begun to be rebuilt, or altered,

by the late King William, must acknowledge it was a very complete palace

before, and fit for a king; and though it might not, according to the

modern method of building or of gardening, pass for a thing exquisitely

fine, yet it had this remaining to itself, and perhaps peculiar--namely,

that it showed a situation exceedingly capable of improvement, and of

being made one of the most delightful palaces in Europe.

This her Majesty Queen Mary was so sensible of, that, while the king had

ordered the pulling down the old apartments, and building it up in that

most beautiful form which we see them now appear in, her Majesty,

impatient of enjoying so agreeable a retreat, fixed upon a building

formerly made use of chiefly for landing from the river, and therefore

called the Water Galley, and here, as if she had been conscious that she

had but a few years to enjoy it, she ordered all the little neat curious

things to be done which suited her own conveniences, and made it the

pleasantest little thing within doors that could possibly be made, though

its situation being such as it could not be allowed to stand after the

great building was finished, we now see no remains of it.

The queen had here her gallery of beauties, being the pictures at full-

length of the principal ladies attending upon her Majesty, or who were

frequently in her retinue; and this was the more beautiful sight because

the originals were all in being, and often to be compared with their

pictures. Her Majesty had here a fine apartment, with a set of lodgings

for her private retreat only, but most exquisitely furnished,

particularly a fine chintz bed, then a great curiosity; another of her

own work while in Holland, very magnificent, and several others; and here

was also her Majesty's fine collection of Delft ware, which indeed was

very large and fine; and here was also a vast stock of fine china ware,

the like whereof was not then to be seen in England; the long gallery, as

above, was filled with this china, and every other place where it could

be placed with advantage.

The queen had here also a small bathing-room, made very fine, suited

either to hot or cold bathing, as the season should invite; also a dairy,

with all its conveniences, in which her Majesty took great delight. All

these things were finished with expedition, that here their Majesties

might repose while they saw the main building go forward. While this was

doing, the gardens were laid out, the plan of them devised by the king

himself, and especially the amendments and alterations were made by the

king or the queen's particular special command, or by both, for their

Majesties agreed so well in their fancy, and had both so good judgment in

the just proportions of things, which are the principal beauties of a

garden, that it may be said they both ordered everything that was done.

Here the fine parcel of limes which form the semicircle on the south

front of the house by the iron gates, looking into the park, were by the

dexterous hand of the head gardener removed, after some of them had been

almost thirty years planted in other places, though not far off. I know

the King of France in the decoration of the gardens of Versailles had

oaks removed, which by their dimensions must have been above an hundred

years old, and yet were taken up with so much art, and by the strength of

such engines, by which such a monstrous quantity of earth was raised with

them, that the trees could not feel their remove--that is to say, their

growth was not at all hindered. This, I confess, makes the wonder much

the less in those trees at Hampton Court gardens; but the performance was

not the less difficult or nice, however, in these, and they thrive

perfectly well.

While the gardens were thus laid out, the king also directed the laying

the pipes for the fountains and _jet-d'eaux_, and particularly the

dimensions of them, and what quantity of water they should cast up, and

increased the number of them after the first design.

The ground on the side of the other front has received some alterations

since the taking down the Water Galley; but not that part immediately

next the lodgings. The orange-trees and fine Dutch bays are placed

within the arches of the building under the first floor; so that the

lower part of the house was all one as a greenhouse for sometime. Here

stand advanced, on two pedestals of stone, two marble vases or flower-

pots of most exquisite workmanship--the one done by an Englishman, and

the other by a German. It is hard to say which is the best performance,

though the doing of it was a kind of trial of skill between them; but it

gives us room, without any partiality, to say they were both masters of

their art.

The _parterre_ on that side descends from the terrace-walk by steps, and

on the left a terrace goes down to the water-side, from which the garden

on the eastward front is overlooked, and gives a most pleasant prospect.

The fine scrolls and _bordure_ of these gardens were at first edged with

box, but on the queen's disliking the smell those edgings were taken up,

but have since been planted again--at least, in many places--nothing

making so fair and regular an edging as box, or is so soon brought to its

perfection.

On the north side of the house, where the gardens seemed to want

screening from the weather or the view of the chapel, and some part of

the old building required to be covered from the eye, the vacant ground,

which was large, is very happily cast into a wilderness, with a labyrinth

and _espaliers_ so high that they effectually take off all that part of

the old building which would have been offensive to the sight. This

labyrinth and wilderness is not only well designed, and completely

finished, but is perfectly well kept, and the _espaliers_ filled exactly

at bottom, to the very ground, and are led up to proportioned heights on

the top, so that nothing of that kind can be more beautiful.

The house itself is every way answerable on the outside to the beautiful

prospect, and the two fronts are the largest and, beyond comparison, the

finest of the kind in England. The great stairs go up from the second

court of the palace on the right hand, and lead you to the south

prospect.

I hinted in my last that King William brought into England the love of

fine paintings as well as that of fine gardens; and you have an example

of it in the cartoons, as they are called, being five pieces of such

paintings as, if you will believe men of nice judgment and great

travelling, are not to be matched in Europe. The stories are known, but

especially two of them--viz., that of St. Paul preaching on Mars Hill to

the self-wise Athenians, and that of St. Peter passing sentence of death

on Ananias--I say, these two strike the mind with the utmost surprise,

the passions are so drawn to the life; astonishment, terror, and death in

the face of Ananias, zeal and a sacred fire in the eyes of the blessed

Apostle, fright and surprise upon the countenances of the beholders in

the piece of Ananias; all these describe themselves so naturally that you

cannot but seem to discover something of the like passions, even in

seeing them.

In the other there is the boldness and courage with which St. Paul

undertook to talk to a set of men who, he knew, despised all the world,

as thinking themselves able to teach them anything. In the audience

there is anticipating pride and conceit in some, a smile or fleer of

contempt in others, but a kind of sensible conviction, though crushed in

its beginning, on the faces of the rest; and all together appear

confounded, but have little to say, and know nothing at all of it; they

gravely put him off to hear him another time; all these are seen here in

the very dress of the face--that is, the very countenances which they

hold while they listen to the new doctrine which the Apostle preached to

a people at that time ignorant of it.

The other of the cartoons are exceeding fine but I mention these as the

particular two which are most lively, which strike the fancy the soonest

at first view. It is reported, but with what truth I know not, that the

late French king offered an hundred thousand _louis d'ors_ for these

pictures; but this, I say, is but a report. The king brought a great

many other fine pieces to England, and with them the love of fine

paintings so universally spread itself among the nobility and persons of

figure all over the kingdom that it is incredible what collections have

been made by English gentlemen since that time, and how all Europe has

been rummaged, as we may say, for pictures to bring over hither, where

for twenty years they yielded the purchasers, such as collected them for

sale, immense profit. But the rates are abated since that, and we begin

to be glutted with the copies and frauds of the Dutch and Flemish

painters who have imposed grossly upon us. But to return to the palace

of Hampton Court. Queen Mary lived not to see it completely finished,

and her death, with the other difficulties of that reign, put a stop to

the works for some time till the king, reviving his good liking of the

place, set them to work again, and it was finished as we see it. But I

have been assured that had the peace continued, and the king lived to

enjoy the continuance of it, his Majesty had resolved to have pulled down

all the remains of the old building (such as the chapel and the large

court within the first gate), and to have built up the whole palace after

the manner of those two fronts already done. In these would have been an

entire set of rooms of state for the receiving and, if need had been,

lodging and entertaining any foreign prince with his retinue; also

offices for all the Secretaries of State, Lords of the Treasury, and of

Trade, to have repaired to for the despatch of such business as it might

be necessary to have done there upon the king's longer residence there

than ordinary; as also apartments for all the great officers of the

Household; so that had the house had two great squares added, as was

designed, there would have been no room to spare, or that would not have

been very well filled. But the king's death put an end to all these

things.

Since the death of King William, Hampton Court seemed abandoned of its

patron. They have gotten a kind of proverbial saying relating to Hampton

Court, viz., that it has been generally chosen by every other prince

since it became a house of note. King Charles was the first that

delighted in it since Queen Elizabeth's time. As for the reigns before,

it was but newly forfeited to the Crown, and was not made a royal house

till King Charles I., who was not only a prince that delighted in country

retirements, but knew how to make choice of them by the beauty of their

situation, the goodness of the air, &c. He took great delight here, and,

had he lived to enjoy it in peace, had purposed to make it another thing

than it was. But we all know what took him off from that felicity, and

all others; and this house was at last made one of his prisons by his

rebellious subjects.

His son, King Charles II., may well be said to have an aversion to the

place, for the reason just mentioned--namely, the treatment his royal

father met with there--and particularly that the rebel and murderer of

his father, Cromwell, afterwards possessed this palace, and revelled here

in the blood of the royal party, as he had done in that of his sovereign.

King Charles II. therefore chose Windsor, and bestowed a vast sum in

beautifying the castle there, and which brought it to the perfection we

see it in at this day--some few alterations excepted, done in the time of

King William.

King William (for King James is not to be named as to his choice of

retired palaces, his delight running quite another way)--I say, King

William fixed upon Hampton Court, and it was in his reign that Hampton

Court put on new clothes, and, being dressed gay and glorious, made the

figure we now see it in.

The late queen, taken up for part of her reign in her kind regards to the

prince her spouse, was obliged to reside where her care of his health

confined her, and in this case kept for the most part at Kensington,

where he died; but her Majesty always discovered her delight to be at

Windsor, where she chose the little house, as it was called, opposite to

the Castle, and took the air in her chaise in the parks and forest as she

saw occasion.

Now Hampton Court, by the like alternative, is come into request again;

and we find his present Majesty, who is a good judge too of the

pleasantness and situation of a place of that kind, has taken Hampton

Court into his favour, and has made it much his choice for the summer's

retreat of the Court, and where they may best enjoy the diversions of the

season. When Hampton Court will find such another favourable juncture as

in King William's time, when the remainder of her ashes shall be swept

away, and her complete fabric, as designed by King William, shall be

finished, I cannot tell; but if ever that shall be, I know no palace in

Europe, Versailles excepted, which can come up to her, either for beauty

and magnificence, or for extent of building, and the ornaments attending

it.

From Hampton Court I directed my course for a journey into the south-west

part of England; and to take up my beginning where I concluded my last, I

crossed to Chertsey on the Thames, a town I mentioned before; from

whence, crossing the Black Desert, as I called it, of Bagshot Heath, I

directed my course for Hampshire or Hantshire, and particularly for

Basingstoke--that is to say, that a little before, I passed into the

great Western Road upon the heath, somewhat west of Bagshot, at a village

called Blackwater, and entered Hampshire, near Hartleroe.

Before we reach Basingstoke, we get rid of that unpleasant country which

I so often call a desert, and enter into a pleasant fertile country,

enclosed and cultivated like the rest of England; and passing a village

or two we enter Basingstoke, in the midst of woods and pastures, rich and

fertile, and the country accordingly spread with the houses of the

nobility and gentry, as in other places. On the right hand, a little

before we come to the town, we pass at a small distance the famous

fortress, so it was then, of Basing, being a house belonging then to the

Marquis of Winchester, the great ancestor of the present family of the

Dukes of Bolton.

This house, garrisoned by a resolute band of old soldiers, was a great

curb to the rebels of the Parliament party almost through that whole war;

till it was, after a vigorous defence, yielded to the conquerors by the

inevitable fate of things at that time. The old house is, indeed,

demolished but the successor of the family, the first Duke of Bolton, has

erected a very noble fabric in the same place, or near it, which,

however, is not equal to the magnificence which fame gives to the ancient

house, whose strength of building only, besides the outworks, withstood

the battery of cannon in several attacks, and repulsed the Roundheads

three or four times when they attempted to besiege it. It is incredible

what booty the garrison of this place picked up, lying as they did just

on the great Western Road, where they intercepted the carriers, plundered

the waggons, and suffered nothing to pass--to the great interruption of

the trade of the city of London.

Basingstoke is a large populous market-town, has a good market for corn,

and lately within a very few years is fallen into a manufacture, viz., of

making druggets and shalloons, and such slight goods, which, however,

employs a good number of the poor people, and enables them to get their

bread, which knew not how to get it before.

From hence the great Western Road goes on to Whitchurch and Andover, two

market-towns, and sending members to Parliament; at the last of which the

Downs, or open country, begins, which we in general, though falsely, call

Salisbury Plain. But my resolution being to take in my view what I had

passed by before, I was obliged to go off to the left hand, to Alresford

and Winchester.

Alresford was a flourishing market-town, and remarkable for this--that

though it had no great trade, and particularly very little, if any,

manufactures, yet there was no collection in the town for the poor, nor

any poor low enough to take alms of the parish, which is what I do not

think can be said of any town in England besides.

But this happy circumstance, which so distinguished Alresford from all

her neighbours, was brought to an end in the year ---, when by a sudden

and surprising fire the whole town, with both the church and the market-

house, was reduced to a heap of rubbish; and, except a few poor huts at

the remotest ends of the town, not a house left standing. The town is

since that very handsomely rebuilt, and the neighbouring gentlemen

contributed largely to the relief of the people, especially by sending in

timber towards their building; also their market-house is handsomely

built, but the church not yet, though we hear there is a fund raising

likewise for that.

Here is a very large pond, or lake of water, kept up to a head by a

strong _batter d'eau_, or dam, which the people tell us was made by the

Romans; and that it is to this day part of the great Roman highway which

leads from Winchester to Alton, and, as it is supposed, went on to

London, though we nowhere see any remains of it, except between

Winchester and Alton, and chiefly between this town and Alton.

Near this town, a little north-west, the Duke of Bolton has another seat,

which, though not large, is a very handsome beautiful palace, and the

gardens not only very exact, but very finely situate, the prospect and

vistas noble and great, and the whole very well kept.

From hence, at the end of seven miles over the Downs, we come to the very

ancient city of Winchester; not only the great church (which is so famous

all over Europe, and has been so much talked of), but even the whole city

has at a distance the face of venerable, and looks ancient afar off; and

yet here are many modern buildings too, and some very handsome; as the

college schools, with the bishop's palace, built by Bishop Morley since

the late wars--the old palace of the bishop having been ruined by that

known church incendiary Sir William Waller and his crew of plunderers,

who, if my information is not wrong, as I believe it is not, destroyed

more monuments of the dead, and defaced more churches, than all the

Roundheads in England beside.

This church, and the schools also are accurately described by several

writers, especially by the "Monasticon," where their antiquity and

original is fully set forth. The outside of the church is as plain and

coarse as if the founders had abhorred ornaments, or that William of

Wickham had been a Quaker, or at least a Quietist. There is neither

statue, nor a niche for a statue, to be seen on all the outside; no

carved work, no spires, towers, pinnacles, balustrades, or anything; but

mere walls, buttresses, windows, and coigns necessary to the support and

order of the building. It has no steeple, but a short tower covered

flat, as if the top of it had fallen down, and it had been covered in

haste to keep the rain out till they had time to build it up again.

But the inside of the church has many very good things in it, and worth

observation; it was for some ages the burying-place of the English Saxon

kings, whose _reliques_, at the repair of the church, were collected by

Bishop Fox, and being put together into large wooden chests lined with

lead were again interred at the foot of the great wall in the choir,

three on one side, and three on the other, with an account whose bones

are in each chest. Whether the division of the _reliques_ might be

depended upon, has been doubted, but is not thought material, so that we

do but believe they are all there.

The choir of the church appears very magnificent; the roof is very high,

and the Gothic work in the arched part is very fine, though very old; the

painting in the windows is admirably good, and easy to be distinguished

by those that understand those things: the steps ascending to the choir

make a very fine show, having the statues of King James and his son King

Charles, in copper, finely cast; the first on the right hand, and the

other on the left, as you go up to the choir.

The choir is said to be the longest in England; and as the number of

prebendaries, canons, &c., are many, it required such a length. The

ornaments of the choir are the effects of the bounty of several bishops.

The fine altar (the noblest in England by much) was done by Bishop

Morley; the roof and the coat-of-arms of the Saxon and Norman kings were

done by Bishop Fox; and the fine throne for the bishop in the choir was

given by Bishop Mew in his lifetime; and it was well it was for if he had

ordered it by will, there is reason to believe it had never been

done--that reverend prelate, notwithstanding he enjoyed so rich a

bishopric, scarce leaving money enough behind him to pay for his coffin.

There are a great many persons of rank buried in this church, besides the

Saxon kings mentioned above, and besides several of the most eminent

bishops of the See. Just under the altar lies a son of William the

Conqueror, without any monument; and behind the altar, under a very fine

and venerable monument, lies the famous Lord Treasurer Weston, late Earl

of Portland, Lord High Treasurer of England under King Charles I. His

effigy is in copper armour at full-length, with his head raised on three

cushions of the same, and is a very magnificent work. There is also a

very fine monument of Cardinal Beaufort in his cardinal's robes and hat.

The monument of Sir John Cloberry is extraordinary, but more because it

puts strangers upon inquiring into his story than for anything wonderful

in the figure, it being cut in a modern dress (the habit gentlemen wore

in those times, which, being now so much out of fashion, appears mean

enough). But this gentleman's story is particular, being the person

solely entrusted with the secret of the restoration of King Charles II.,

as the messenger that passed between General Monk on one hand, and Mr.

Montague and others entrusted by King Charles II. on the other hand;

which he managed so faithfully as to effect that memorable event, to

which England owes the felicity of all her happy days since that time; by

which faithful service Sir John Cloberry, then a private musketeer only,

raised himself to the honour of a knight, with the reward of a good

estate from the bounty of the king.

Everybody that goes into this church, and reads what is to be read there,

will be told that the body of the church was built by the famous William

of Wickham; whose monument, intimating his fame, lies in the middle of

that part which was built at his expense.

He was a courtier before a bishop; and, though he had no great share of

learning, he was a great promoter of it, and a lover of learned men. His

natural genius was much beyond his acquired parts, and his skill in

politics beyond his ecclesiastic knowledge. He is said to have put his

master, King Edward III., to whom he was Secretary of State, upon the two

great projects which made his reign so glorious, viz.:--First, upon

setting up his claim to the crown of France, and pushing that claim by

force of arms, which brought on the war with France, in which that prince

was three times victorious in battle. (2) Upon setting up, or

instituting the Order of the Garter; in which he (being before that made

Bishop of Winchester) obtained the honour for the Bishops of Winchester

of being always prelates of the Order, as an appendix to the bishopric;

and he himself was the first prelate of the Order, and the ensigns of

that honour are joined with his episcopal ornaments in the robing of his

effigy on the monument above.

To the honour of this bishop, there are other foundations of his, as much

to his fame as that of this church, of which I shall speak in their

order; but particularly the college in this city, which is a noble

foundation indeed. The building consists of two large courts, in which

are the lodgings for the masters and scholars, and in the centre a very

noble chapel; beyond that, in the second court, are the schools, with a

large cloister beyond them, and some enclosures laid open for the

diversion of the scholars. There also is a great hall, where the

scholars dine. The funds for the support of this college are very

considerable; the masters live in a very good figure, and their

maintenance is sufficient to support it. They have all separate

dwellings in the house, and all possible conveniences appointed them.

The scholars have exhibitions at a certain time of continuance here, if

they please to study in the new college at Oxford, built by the same

noble benefactor, of which I shall speak in its order.

The clergy here live at large, and very handsomely, in the Close

belonging to the cathedral; where, besides the bishop's palace mentioned

above, are very good houses, and very handsomely built, for the

prebendaries, canons, and other dignitaries of this church. The Deanery

is a very pleasant dwelling, the gardens very large, and the river

running through them; but the floods in winter sometimes incommode the

gardens very much.

This school has fully answered the end of the founder, who, though he was

no great scholar, resolved to erect a house for the making the ages to

come more learned than those that went before; and it has, I say, fully

answered the end, for many learned and great men have been raised here,

some of whom we shall have occasion to mention as we go on.

Among the many private inscriptions in this church, we found one made by

Dr. Over, once an eminent physician in this city, on a mother and child,

who, being his patients, died together and were buried in the same grave,

and which intimate that one died of a fever, and the other of a dropsy:

"Surrepuit natum Febris, matrem abstulit Hydrops,

Igne Prior Fatis, Altera cepit Aqua."

As the city itself stands in a vale on the bank, and at the conjunction

of two small rivers, so the country rising every way, but just as the

course of the water keeps the valley open, you must necessarily, as you

go out of the gates, go uphill every way; but when once ascended, you

come to the most charming plains and most pleasant country of that kind

in England; which continues with very small intersections of rivers and

valleys for above fifty miles, as shall appear in the sequel of this

journey.

At the west gate of this city was anciently a castle, known to be so by

the ruins more than by any extraordinary notice taken of it in history.

What they say of it, that the Saxon kings kept their court here, is

doubtful, and must be meant of the West Saxons only. And as to the tale

of King Arthur's Round Table, which they pretend was kept here for him

and his two dozen of knights (which table hangs up still, as a piece of

antiquity to the tune of twelve hundred years, and has, as they pretend,

the names of the said knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man

can read), all this story I see so little ground to give the least credit

to that I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a

fib.

Where this castle stood, or whatever else it was (for some say there was

no castle there), the late King Charles II. marked out a very noble

design, which, had he lived, would certainly have made that part of the

country the Newmarket of the ages to come; for the country hereabout far

excels that of Newmarket Heath for all kinds of sport and diversion fit

for a prince, nobody can dispute. And as the design included a noble

palace (sufficient, like Windsor, for a summer residence of the whole

court), it would certainly have diverted the king from his cursory

journeys to Newmarket.

The plan of this house has received several alterations, and as it is

never like to be finished, it is scarce worth recording the variety. The

building is begun, and the front next the city carried up to the roof and

covered, but the remainder is not begun. There was a street of houses

designed from the gate of the palace down to the town, but it was never

begun to be built; the park marked out was exceeding large, near ten

miles in circumference, and ended west upon the open Downs, in view of

the town of Stockbridge.

This house was afterwards settled, with a royal revenue also, as an

appanage (established by Parliament) upon Prince George of Denmark for

his life, in case he had out-lived the queen; but his Royal Highness

dying before her Majesty, all hope of seeing this design perfected, or

the house finished, is now vanished.

I cannot omit that there are several public edifices in this city and in

the neighbourhood, as the hospitals and the building adjoining near the

east gate; and towards the north a piece of an old monastery

undemolished, and which is still preserved to the religion, being the

residence of some private Roman Catholic gentlemen, where they have an

oratory, and, as they say, live still according to the rules of St.

Benedict. This building is called Hide House; and as they live very

usefully, and to the highest degree obliging among their neighbours, they

meet with no obstruction or disturbance from anybody.

Winchester is a place of no trade other than is naturally occasioned by

the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages one with another.

Here is no manufacture, no navigation; there was indeed an attempt to

make the river navigable from Southampton, and it was once made

practicable, but it never answered the expense so as to give

encouragement to the undertakers.

Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being in

the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place. The clergy

also here are, generally speaking, very rich and very numerous.

As there is such good company, so they are gotten into that new-fashioned

way of conversing by assemblies. I shall do no more than mention them

here; they are pleasant and agreeable to the young peoples, and sometimes

fatal to them, of which, in its place, Winchester has its share of the

mirth. May it escape the ill-consequences!

The hospital on the south of this city, at a mile distant on the road to

Southampton, is worth notice. It is said to be founded by King William

Rufus, but was not endowed or appointed till later times by Cardinal

Beaufort. Every traveller that knocks at the door of this house in his

way, and asks for it, claims the relief of a piece of white bread and a

cup of beer, and this donation is still continued. A quantity of good

beer is set apart every day to be given away, and what is left is

distributed to other poor, but none of it kept to the next day.

How the revenues of this hospital, which should maintain the master and

thirty private gentlemen (whom they call Fellows, but ought to call

Brothers), is now reduced to maintain only fourteen, while the master

lives in a figure equal to the best gentleman in the country, would be

well worth the inquiry of a proper visitor, if such can be named. It is

a thing worthy of complaint when public charities, designed for the

relief of the poor, are embezzled and depredated by the rich, and turned

to the support of luxury and pride.

From Winchester is about twenty-five miles, and over the most charming

plains that can anywhere be seen (far, in my opinion, excelling the

plains of Mecca), we come to Salisbury. The vast flocks of sheep which

one everywhere sees upon these Downs, and the great number of those

flocks, is a sight truly worth observation; it is ordinary for these

flocks to contain from three thousand to five thousand in a flock, and

several private farmers hereabouts have two or three such flocks.

But it is more remarkable still how a great part of these Downs comes, by

a new method of husbandry, to be not only made arable (which they never

were in former days), but to bear excellent wheat, and great crops, too,

though otherwise poor barren land, and never known to our ancestors to be

capable of any such thing--nay, they would perhaps have laughed at any

one that would have gone about to plough up the wild downs and hills

where the sheep were wont to go. But experience has made the present age

wiser and more skilful in husbandry; for by only folding the sheep upon

the ploughed lands--those lands which otherwise are barren, and where the

plough goes within three or four inches of the solid rock of chalk, are

made fruitful and bear very good wheat, as well as rye and barley. I

shall say more of this when I come to speak of the same practice farther

in the country.

This plain country continues in length from Winchester to Salisbury

(twenty-five miles), from thence to Dorchester (twenty-two miles), thence

to Weymouth (six miles); so that they lie near fifty miles in length and

breadth; they reach also in some places thirty-five to forty miles. They

who would make any practicable guess at the number of sheep usually fed

on these Downs may take it from a calculation made, as I was told, at

Dorchester, that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed within six

miles of that town, measuring every way round and the town in the centre.

As we passed this plain country, we saw a great many old camps, as well

Roman as British, and several remains of the ancient inhabitants of this

kingdom, and of their wars, battles, entrenchments, encampments,

buildings, and other fortifications, which are indeed very agreeable to a

traveller that has read anything of the history of the country. Old

Sarum is as remarkable as any of these, where there is a double

entrenchment, with a deep graff or ditch to either of them; the area

about one hundred yards in diameter, taking in the whole crown of the

hill, and thereby rendering the ascent very difficult. Near this there

is one farm-house, which is all the remains I could see of any town in or

near the place (for the encampment has no resemblance of a town), and yet

this is called the borough of Old Sarum, and sends two members to

Parliament. Whom those members can justly say they represent would be

hard for them to answer.

Some will have it that the old city of _Sorbiodunum_ or Salisbury stood

here, and was afterwards (for I know not what reasons) removed to the low

marshy grounds among the rivers, where it now stands. But as I see no

authority for it other than mere tradition, I believe my share of it, and

take it _ad referendum_.

Salisbury itself is indeed a large and pleasant city, though I do not

think it at all the pleasanter for that which they boast so much

of--namely, the water running through the middle of every street--or that

it adds anything to the beauty of the place, but just the contrary; it

keeps the streets always dirty, full of wet and filth and weeds, even in

the middle of summer.

The city is placed upon the confluence of two large rivers, the Avon and

the Willy, neither of them considerable rivers, but very large when

joined together, and yet larger when they receive a third river (viz.,

the Naddir), which joins them near Clarendon Park, about three miles

below the city; then, with a deep channel and a current less rapid, they

run down to Christchurch, which is their port. And where they empty

themselves into the sea, from that town upwards towards Salisbury they

are made navigable to within two miles, and might be so quite into the

city, were it not for the strength of the stream.

As the city of Winchester is a city without trade--that is to say,

without any particular manufactures--so this city of Salisbury and all

the county of Wilts, of which it is the capital, are full of a great

variety of manufactures, and those some of the most considerable in

England--namely, the clothing trade and the trade of flannels, druggets,

and several other sorts of manufactures, of which in their order.

The city of Salisbury has two remarkable manufactures carried on in it,

and which employ the poor of great part of the country round--namely,

fine flannels, and long-cloths for the Turkey trade, called Salisbury

whites. The people of Salisbury are gay and rich, and have a flourishing

trade; and there is a great deal of good manners and good company among

them--I mean, among the citizens, besides what is found among the

gentlemen; for there are many good families in Salisbury besides the

citizens.

This society has a great addition from the Close--that is to say, the

circle of ground walled in adjacent to the cathedral; in which the

families of the prebendaries and commons, and others of the clergy

belonging to the cathedral, have their houses, as is usual in all cities,

where there are cathedral churches. These are so considerable here, and

the place so large, that it is (as it is called in general) like another

city.

The cathedral is famous for the height of its spire, which is without

exception the highest and the handsomest in England, being from the

ground 410 feet, and yet the walls so exceeding thin that at the upper

part of the spire, upon a view made by the late Sir Christopher Wren, the

wall was found to be less than five inches thick; upon which a

consultation was had whether the spire, or at least the upper part of it,

should be taken down, it being supposed to have received some damage by

the great storm in the year 1703; but it was resolved in the negative,

and Sir Christopher ordered it to be so strengthened with bands of iron

plates as has effectually secured it; and I have heard some of the best

architects say it is stronger now than when it was first built.

They tell us here long stories of the great art used in laying the first

foundation of this church, the ground being marshy and wet, occasioned by

the channels of the rivers; that it was laid upon piles, according to

some, and upon woolpacks, according to others. But this is not supposed

by those who know that the whole country is one rock of chalk, even from

the tops of the highest hills to the bottom of the deepest rivers.

They tell us this church was forty years a-building, and cost an immense

sum of money; but it must be acknowledged that the inside of the work is

not answerable in the decoration of things to the workmanship without.

The painting in the choir is mean, and more like the ordinary method of

common drawing-room or tavern painting than that of a church; the carving

is good, but very little of it; and it is rather a fine church than

finely set off.

The ordinary boast of this building (that there were as many gates as

months, as many windows as days, as many marble pillars as hours in the

year) is now no recommendation at all. However, the mention of it must

be preserved:--

"As many days as in one year there be,

So many windows in one church we see;

As many marble pillars there appear

As there are hours throughout the fleeting year;

As many gates as moons one year do view:

Strange tale to tell, yet not more strange than true."

There are, however, some very fine monuments in this church; particularly

one belonging to the noble family of Seymours, since Dukes of Somerset

(and ancestors of the present flourishing family), which on a most

melancholy occasion has been now lately opened again to receive the body

of the late Duchess of Somerset, the happy consort for almost forty years

of his Grace the present Duke, and only daughter and heiress of the

ancient and noble family of Percy, Earls of Northumberland, whose great

estate she brought into the family of Somerset, who now enjoy it.

With her was buried at the same time her Grace's daughter the Marchioness

of Caermarthen (being married to the Marquis of Caermarthen, son and heir-

apparent to the Lord of Leeds), who died for grief at the loss of the

duchess her mother, and was buried with her; also her second son, the

Duke Percy Somerset, who died a few months before, and had been buried in

the Abbey church of Westminster, but was ordered to be removed and laid

here with the ancestors of his house. And I hear his Grace designs to

have a yet more magnificent monument erected in this cathedral for them,

just by the other which is there already.

How the Dukes of Somerset came to quit this church for their

burying-place, and be laid in Westminster Abbey, that I know not; but it

is certain that the present Duke has chosen to have his family laid here

with their ancestors, and to that end has caused the corpse of his son,

the Lord Percy, as above, and one of his daughters, who had been buried

in the Abbey, to be removed and brought down to this vault, which lies in

that they call the Virgin Mary's Chapel, behind the altar. There is, as

above, a noble monument for a late Duke and Duchess of Somerset in the

place already, with their portraits at full-length, their heads lying

upon cushions, the whole perfectly well wrought in fine polished Italian

marble, and their sons kneeling by them. Those I suppose to be the

father of the great Duke of Somerset, uncle to King Edward IV.; but after

this the family lay in Westminster Abbey, where there is also a fine

monument for that very duke who was beheaded by Edward VI., and who was

the great patron of the Reformation.

Among other monuments of noble men in this cathedral they show you one

that is very extraordinary, and to which there hangs a tale. There was

in the reign of Philip and Mary a very unhappy murder committed by the

then Lord Sturton, or Stourton, a family since extinct, but well known

till within a few years in that country.

This Lord Stourton being guilty of the said murder, which also was

aggravated with very bad circumstances, could not obtain the usual grace

of the Crown (viz., to be beheaded), but Queen Mary positively ordered

that, like a common malefactor, he should die at the gallows. After he

was hanged, his friends desiring to have him buried at Salisbury, the

bishop would not consent that he should be buried in the cathedral

unless, as a farther mark of infamy, his friends would submit to this

condition--viz., that the silken halter in which he was hanged should be

hanged up over his grave in the church as a monument of his crime; which

was accordingly done, and there it is to be seen to this day.

The putting this halter up here was not so wonderful to me as it was that

the posterity of that lord, who remained in good rank some time after,

should never prevail to have that mark of infamy taken off from the

memory of their ancestor.

There are several other monuments in this cathedral, as particularly of

two noblemen of ancient families in Scotland--one of the name of Hay, and

one of the name of Gordon; but they give us nothing of their history, so

that we must be content to say there they lie, and that is all.

The cloister, and the chapter-house adjoining to the church, are the

finest here of any I have seen in England; the latter is octagon, or

eight-square, and is 150 feet in its circumference; the roof bearing all

upon one small marble pillar in the centre, which you may shake with your

hand; and it is hardly to be imagined it can be any great support to the

roof, which makes it the more curious (it is not indeed to be matched, I

believe, in Europe).

From hence directing my course to the seaside in pursuit of my first

design--viz., of viewing the whole coast of England--I left the great

road and went down the east side of the river towards New Forest and

Lymington; and here I saw the ancient house and seat of Clarendon, the

mansion of the ancient family of Hide, ancestors of the great Earl of

Clarendon, and from whence his lordship was honoured with that title, or

the house erected into an honour in favour of his family.

But this being a large county, and full of memorable branches of

antiquity and modern curiosity, I cannot quit my observations so soon.

But being happily fixed, by the favour of a particular friend, at so

beautiful a spot of ground as this of Clarendon Park, I made several

little excursions from hence to view the northern parts of this county--a

county so fruitful of wonders that, though I do not make antiquity my

chief search, yet I must not pass it over entirely, where so much of it,

and so well worth observation, is to be found, which would look as if I

either understood not the value of the study, or expected my readers

should be satisfied with a total omission of it.

I have mentioned that this county is generally a vast continued body of

high chalky hills, whose tops spread themselves into fruitful and

pleasant downs and plains, upon which great flocks of sheep are fed, &c.

But the reader is desired to observe these hills and plains are most

beautifully intersected and cut through by the course of divers pleasant

and profitable rivers; in the course and near the banks of which there

always is a chain of fruitful meadows and rich pastures, and those

interspersed with innumerable pleasant towns, villages, and houses, and

among them many of considerable magnitude. So that, while you view the

downs, and think the country wild and uninhabited, yet when you come to

descend into these vales you are surprised with the most pleasant and

fertile country in England.

There are no less than four of these rivers, which meet all together at

or near the city of Salisbury; especially the waters of three of them run

through the streets of the city--the Nadder and the Willy and the

Avon--and the course of these three lead us through the whole mountainous

part of the county. The two first join their waters at Wilton, the

shiretown, though a place of no great notice now; and these are the

waters which run through the canal and the gardens of Wilton House, the

seat of that ornament of nobility and learning, the Earl of Pembroke.

One cannot be said to have seen anything that a man of curiosity would

think worth seeing in this county, and not have been at Wilton House; but

not the beautiful building, not the ancient trophy of a great family, not

the noble situation, not all the pleasures of the gardens, parks,

fountains, hare-warren, or of whatever is rare either in art or nature,

are equal to that yet more glorious sight of a noble princely palace

constantly filled with its noble and proper inhabitants. The lord and

proprietor, who is indeed a true patriarchal monarch, reigns here with an

authority agreeable to all his subjects (family); and his reign is made

agreeable, by his first practising the most exquisite government of

himself, and then guiding all under him by the rules of honour and

virtue, being also himself perfectly master of all the needful arts of

family government--I mean, needful to make that government both easy and

pleasant to those who are under it, and who therefore willingly, and by

choice, conform to it.

Here an exalted genius is the instructor, a glorious example the guide,

and a gentle well-directed hand the governor and law-giver to the whole;

and the family, like a well-governed city, appears happy, flourishing,

and regular, groaning under no grievance, pleased with what they enjoy,

and enjoying everything which they ought to be pleased with.

Nor is the blessing of this noble resident extended to the family only,

but even to all the country round, who in their degree feel the effects

of the general beneficence, and where the neighbourhood (however poor)

receive all the good they can expect, and are sure to have no injury or

oppression.

The canal before the house lies parallel with the road, and receives into

it the whole river Willy, or at least is able to do so; it may, indeed,

be said that the river is made into a canal. When we come into the

courtyards before the house there are several pieces of antiquity to

entertain the curious, as particularly a noble column of porphyry, with a

marble statue of Venus on the top of it. In Italy, and especially at

Rome and Naples, we see a great variety of fine columns, and some of them

of excellent workmanship and antiquity; and at some of the courts of the

princes of Italy the like is seen, as especially at the court of

Florence; but in England I do not remember to have seen anything like

this, which, as they told me, is two-and-thirty feet high, and of

excellent workmanship, and that it came last from Candia, but formerly

from Alexandria. What may belong to the history of it any further, I

suppose is not known--at least, they could tell me no more of it who

showed it me.

On the left of the court was formerly a large grotto and curious water-

works; and in a house, or shed, or part of the building, which opened

with two folding-doors, like a coach-house, a large equestrian statue of

one of the ancestors of the family in complete armour, as also another of

a Roman Emperor in brass. But the last time I had the curiosity to see

this house, I missed that part; so that I supposed they were removed.

As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace, is a

nobleman of great personal merit many other ways, so he is a man of

learning and reading beyond most men of his lordship's high rank in this

nation, if not in the world; and as his reading has made him a master of

antiquity, and judge of such pieces of antiquity as he has had

opportunity to meet with in his own travels and otherwise in the world,

so it has given him a love of the study, and made him a collector of

valuable things, as well in painting as in sculpture, and other

excellences of art, as also of nature; insomuch that Wilton House is now

a mere museum or a chamber of rarities, and we meet with several things

there which are to be found nowhere else in the world.

As his lordship is a great collector of fine paintings, so I know no

nobleman's house in England so prepared, as if built on purpose, to

receive them; the largest and the finest pieces that can be imagined

extant in the world might have found a place here capable to receive

them. I say, they "might have found," as if they could not now, which is

in part true; for at present the whole house is so completely filled that

I see no room for any new piece to crowd in without displacing some other

fine piece that hung there before. As for the value of the piece that

might so offer to succeed the displaced, that the great judge of the

whole collection, the earl himself, must determine; and as his judgment

is perfectly good, the best picture would be sure to possess the place.

In a word, here is without doubt the best, if not the greatest,

collection of rarities and paintings that are to be seen together in any

one nobleman's or gentleman's house in England. The piece of our Saviour

washing His disciples' feet, which they show you in one of the first

rooms you go into, must be spoken of by everybody that has any knowledge

of painting, and is an admirable piece indeed.

You ascend the great staircase at the upper end of the hall, which is

very large; at the foot of the staircase you have a Bacchus as large as

life, done in fine Peloponnesian marble, carrying a young Bacchus on his

arm, the young one eating grapes, and letting you see by his countenance

that he is pleased with the taste of them. Nothing can be done finer, or

more lively represent the thing intended--namely, the gust of the

appetite, which if it be not a passion, it is an affection which is as

much seen in the countenance, perhaps more than any other. One ought to

stop every two steps of this staircase, as we go up, to contemplate the

vast variety of pictures that cover the walls, and of some of the best

masters in Europe; and yet this is but an introduction to what is beyond

them.

When you are entered the apartments, such variety seizes you every way

that you scarce know to which hand to turn yourself. First on one side

you see several rooms filled with paintings as before, all so curious,

and the variety such, that it is with reluctance that you can turn from

them; while looking another way you are called off by a vast collection

of busts and pieces of the greatest antiquity of the kind, both Greek and

Romans; among these there is one of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in

basso-relievo. I never saw anything like what appears here, except in

the chamber of rarities at Munich in Bavaria.

Passing these, you come into several large rooms, as if contrived for the

reception of the beautiful guests that take them up; one of these is near

seventy feet long, and the ceiling twenty-six feet high, with another

adjoining of the same height and breadth, but not so long. Those

together might be called the Great Gallery of Wilton, and might vie for

paintings with the Gallery of Luxembourg, in the Faubourg of Paris.

These two rooms are filled with the family pieces of the house of

Herbert, most of them by Lilly or Vandyke; and one in particular outdoes

all that I ever met with, either at home or abroad; it is done, as was

the mode of painting at that time, after the manner of a family piece of

King Charles I., with his queen and children, which before the burning of

Whitehall I remember to hang at the east end of the Long Gallery in the

palace.

This piece fills the farther end of the great room which I just now

mentioned; it contains the Earl of Montgomery, ancestor of the house of

Herbert (not then Earls of Pembroke) and his lady, sitting, and as big as

life; there are about them their own five sons and one daughter, and

their daughter-in-law, who was daughter of the Duke of Buckingham,

married to the elder Lord Herbert, their eldest son. It is enough to say

of this piece, it is worth the labour of any lover of art to go five

hundred miles to see it; and I am informed several gentlemen of quality

have come from France almost on purpose. It would be endless to describe

the whole set of the family pictures which take up this room, unless we

would enter into the roof-tree of the family, and set down a genealogical

line of the whole house.

After we have seen this fine range of beauties--for such, indeed, they

are--far from being at an end of your surprise, you have three or four

rooms still upon the same floor, filled with wonders as before. Nothing

can be finer than the pictures themselves, nothing more surprising than

the number of them. At length you descend the back stairs, which are in

themselves large, though not like the other. However, not a

hand's-breadth is left to crowd a picture in of the smallest size; and

even the upper rooms, which might be called garrets, are not naked, but

have some very good pieces in them.

Upon the whole, the genius of the noble collector may be seen in this

glorious collection, than which, take them together, there is not a finer

in any private hand in Europe, and in no hand at all in Britain, private

or public.

The gardens are on the south of the house, and extend themselves beyond

the river, a branch of which runs through one part of them, and still

south of the gardens in the great park, which, extending beyond the vale,

mounts the hill opening at the last to the great down, which is properly

called, by way of distinction, Salisbury Plain, and leads from the city

of Salisbury to Shaftesbury. Here also his lordship has a hare-warren,

as it is called, though improperly. It has, indeed, been a sanctuary for

the hares for many years; but the gentlemen complain that it mars their

game, for that as soon as they put up a hare for their sport, if it be

anywhere within two or three miles, away she runs for the warren, and

there is an end of their pursuit; on the other hand, it makes all the

countrymen turn poachers, and destroy the hares by what means they can.

But this is a smaller matter, and of no great import one way or other.

From this pleasant and agreeable day's work I returned to Clarendon, and

the next day took another short tour to the hills to see that celebrated

piece of antiquity, the wonderful Stonehenge, being six miles from

Salisbury, north, and upon the side of the River Avon, near the town of

Amesbury. It is needless that I should enter here into any part of the

dispute about which our learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselves

that several books (and one of them in folio) have been published about

it; some alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple and altar, or place

of sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument or trophy of victory;

others a monument for the dead, as Mr. Aubrey, and the like. Again, some

will have it be British, some Danish, some Saxon, some Roman, and some,

before them all, Phoenician.

I shall suppose it, as the majority of all writers do, to be a monument

for the dead, and the rather because men's bones have been frequently dug

up in the ground near them. The common opinion that no man could ever

count them, that a baker carried a basket of bread and laid a loaf upon

every stone, and yet never could make out the same number twice, this I

take as a mere country fiction, and a ridiculous one too. The reason why

they cannot easily be told is that many of them lie half or part buried

in the ground; and a piece here and a piece there only appearing above

the grass, it cannot be known easily which belong to one stone and which

to another, or which are separate stones, and which are joined

underground to one another; otherwise, as to those which appear, they are

easy to be told, and I have seen them told four times after one another,

beginning every time at a different place, and every time they amounted

to seventy-two in all; but then this was counting every piece of a stone

of bulk which appeared above the surface of the earth, and was not

evidently part of and adjoining to another, to be a distinct and separate

body or stone by itself.

The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in most

authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the last. The

figure was at first circular, and there were at least four rows or

circles within one another. The main stones were placed upright, and

they were joined on the top by cross-stones, laid from one to another,

and fastened with vast mortises and tenons. Length of time has so

decayed them that not only most of the cross-stones which lay on the top

are fallen down, but many of the upright also, notwithstanding the weight

of them is so prodigious great. How they came thither, or from whence

(no stones of that kind being now to be found in that part of England

near it) is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no

engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir them.

Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreign countries, as

well as here, to move heavier weights than we find practicable now. How

else did Solomon's workmen build the battlement or additional wall to

support the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which the Temple was built,

which was all built of stones of Parian marble, each stone being forty

cubits long and fourteen cubits broad, and eight cubits high or thick,

which, reckoning each cubit at two feet and a half of our measure (as the

learned agree to do), was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad,

and twenty feet thick?

These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, and in which

others agree, were very large, though not so large--the upright stones

twenty-four feet high, seven feet broad, sixteen feet round, and weigh

twelve tons each; and the cross-stones on the top, which he calls

coronets, were six or seven tons. But this does not seem equal; for if

the cross-stones weighed six or seven tons, the others, as they appear

now, were at least five or six times as big, and must weigh in

proportion; and therefore I must think their judgment much nearer the

case who judge the upright stones at sixteen tons or thereabouts

(supposing them to stand a great way into the earth, as it is not doubted

but they do), and the coronets or cross-stones at about two tons, which

is very large too, and as much as their bulk can be thought to allow.

Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--namely, for

an erection or building so ancient that no history has handed down to us

the original. As we find it, then, uncertain, we must leave it so. It

is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and it is a great loss that the

true history of it is not known. But since it is not, I think the making

so many conjectures at the reality, when they know lots can but guess at

it, and, above all, the insisting so long and warmly on their private

opinions, is but amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps

lies the deeper for their search into it.

The downs and plains in this part of England being so open, and the

surface so little subject to alteration, there are more remains of

antiquity to be seen upon them than in other places. For example, I

think they tell us there are three-and-fifty ancient encampments or

fortifications to be seen in this one county--some whereof are exceeding

plain to be seen; some of one form, some of another; some of one nation,

some of another--British, Danish, Saxon, Roman--as at Ebb Down, Burywood,

Oldburgh Hill, Cummerford, Roundway Down, St. Ann's Hill, Bratton Castle,

Clay Hill, Stournton Park, Whitecole Hill, Battlebury, Scrathbury,

Tanesbury, Frippsbury, Southbury Hill, Amesbury, Great Bodwin, Easterley,

Merdon, Aubery, Martenscil Hill, Barbury Castle, and many more.

Also the barrows, as we all agree to call them, are very many in number

in this county, and very obvious, having suffered very little decay.

These are large hillocks of earth cast up, as the ancients agree, by the

soldiers over the bodies of their dead comrades slain in battle; several

hundreds of these are to be seen, especially in the north part of this

county, about Marlborough and the downs, from thence to St. Ann's Hill,

and even every way the downs are full of them.

I have done with matters of antiquity for this county, unless you will

admit me to mention the famous Parliament in the reign of Henry II. held

at Clarendon, where I am now writing, and another intended to be held

there in Richard II.'s time, but prevented by the barons, being then up

in arms against the king.

Near this place, at Farlo, was the birthplace of the late Sir Stephen

Fox, and where the town, sharing in his good fortune, shows several marks

of his bounty, as particularly the building a new church from the

foundation, and getting an Act of Parliament passed for making it

parochial, it being but a chapel-of-ease before to an adjoining parish.

Also Sir Stephen built and endowed an almshouse here for six poor women,

with a master and a free school. The master is to be a clergyman, and to

officiate in the church--that is to say, is to have the living, which,

including the school, is very sufficient.

I am now to pursue my first design, and shall take the west part of

Wiltshire in my return, where are several things still to be taken notice

of, and some very well worth our stay. In the meantime I went on to

Langborough, a fine seat of my Lord Colerain, which is very well kept,

though the family, it seems, is not much in this country, having another

estate and dwelling at Tottenham High Cross, near London.

From hence in my way to the seaside I came to New Forest, of which I have

said something already with relation to the great extent of ground which

lies waste, and in which there is so great a quantity of large timber, as

I have spoken of already.

This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record, laid open

and waste for a forest and for game by that violent tyrant William the

Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopled the country, pulled down

the houses, and, which was worse, the churches of several parishes or

towns, and of abundance of villages, turning the poor people out of their

habitations and possessions, and laying all open for his deer. The same

histories likewise record that two of his own blood and posterity, and

particularly his immediate successor William Rufus, lost their lives in

this forest--one, viz., the said William Rufus, being shot with an arrow

directed at a deer which the king and his company were hunting, and the

arrow, glancing on a tree, changed his course, and struck the king full

on the breast and killed him. This they relate as a just judgment of God

on the cruel devastation made here by the Conqueror. Be it so or not,

as Heaven pleases; but that the king was so killed is certain, and they

show the tree on which the arrow glanced to this day. In King Charles

II.'s time it was ordered to be surrounded with a pale; but as great part

of the paling is down with age, whether the tree be really so old or not

is to me a great question, the action being near seven hundred years ago.

I cannot omit to mention here a proposal made a few years ago to the late

Lord Treasurer Godolphin for re-peopling this forest, which for some

reasons I can be more particular in than any man now left alive, because

I had the honour to draw up the scheme and argue it before that noble

lord and some others who were principally concerned at that time in

bringing over--or, rather, providing for when they were come over--the

poor inhabitants of the Palatinate, a thing in itself commendable, but,

as it was managed, made scandalous to England and miserable to those poor

people.

Some persons being ordered by that noble lord above mentioned to consider

of measures how the said poor people should be provided for, and whether

they could be provided for or no without injury to the public, the answer

was grounded upon this maxim--that the number of inhabitants is the

wealth and strength of a kingdom, provided those inhabitants were such as

by honest industry applied themselves to live by their labour, to

whatsoever trades or employments they were brought up. In the next

place, it was inquired what employments those poor people were brought up

to. It was answered there were husbandmen and artificers of all sorts,

upon which the proposal was as follows. New Forest, in Hampshire, was

singled out to be the place:--

Here it was proposed to draw a great square line containing four thousand

acres of land, marking out two large highways or roads through the

centre, crossing both ways, so that there should be a thousand acres in

each division, exclusive of the land contained in the said cross-roads.

Then it was proposed to send out twenty men and their families, who

should be recommended as honest industrious men, expert in, or at least

capable of being instructed in husbandry, curing and cultivating of land,

breeding and feeding cattle, and the like. To each of these should be

parcelled out, in equal distributions, two hundred acres of this land, so

that the whole four thousand acres should be fully distributed to the

said twenty families, for which they should have no rent to pay, and be

liable to no taxes but such as provided for their own sick or poor,

repairing their own roads, and the like. This exemption from rent and

taxes to continue for twenty years, and then to pay each 50 pounds a year

to the queen--that is to say, to the Crown.

To each of these families, whom I would now call farmers, it was proposed

to advance 200 pounds in ready money as a stock to set them to work; to

furnish them with cattle, horses, cows, hogs, &c.; and to hire and pay

labourers to inclose, clear, and cure the land, which it would be

supposed the first year would not be so much to their advantage as

afterwards, allowing them timber out of the forest to build themselves

houses and barns, sheds and offices, as they should have occasion; also

for carts, waggons, ploughs, harrows, and the like necessary things: care

to be taken that the men and their families went to work forthwith

according to the design.

Thus twenty families would be immediately supplied and provided for, for

there would be no doubt but these families, with so much land given them

gratis, and so much money to work with, would live very well; but what

would this do for the support of the rest, who were supposed to be, to

every twenty farmers, forty or fifty families of other people (some of

one trade, some of another), with women and children? To this it was

answered that these twenty farmers would, by the consequence of their own

settlements, provide for and employ such a proportion of others of their

own people that, by thus providing for twenty families in a place, the

whole number of Palatinates would have been provided for, had they been

twenty thousand more in number than they were, and that without being any

burden upon or injury to the people of England; on the contrary, they

would have been an advantage and an addition of wealth and strength to

the nation, and to the country in particular where they should be thus

seated. For example:--

As soon as the land was marked out, the farmers put in possession of it,

and the money given them, they should be obliged to go to work, in order

to their settlement. Suppose it, then, to be in the spring of the year,

when such work was most proper. First, all hands would be required to

fence and part off the land, and clear it of the timber or bushes, or

whatever else was upon it which required to be removed. The first thing,

therefore, which the farmer would do would be to single out from the rest

of their number every one three servants--that is to say, two men and a

maid; less could not answer the preparations they would be obliged to

make, and yet work hard themselves also. By the help of these they

would, with good management, soon get so much of their land cured, fenced-

off, ploughed, and sowed as should yield them a sufficiency of corn and

kitchen stuff the very first year, both for horse-meat, hog-meat, food

for the family, and some to carry to market, too, by which to bring in

money to go farther on, as above.

At the first entrance they were to have the tents allowed them to live

in, which they then had from the Tower; but as soon as leisure and

conveniences admitted, every farmer was obliged to begin to build him a

farm-house, which he would do gradually, some and some, as he could spare

time from his other works, and money from his little stock.

In order to furnish himself with carts, waggons, ploughs, harrows, wheel-

barrows, hurdles, and all such necessary utensils of husbandry, there

would be an absolute necessity of wheelwrights or cartwrights, one at

least to each division.

Thus, by the way, there would be employed three servants to each farmer,

that makes sixty persons.

Four families of wheelwrights, one to each division--which, suppose five

in a family, makes twenty persons. Suppose four head-carpenters, with

each three men; and as at first all would be building together, they

would to every house building have at least one labourer. Four families

of carpenters, five to each family, and three servants, is thirty-two

persons; one labourer to each house building is twenty persons more.

Thus here would be necessarily brought together in the very first of the

work one hundred and thirty-two persons, besides the head-farmers, who at

five also to each family are one hundred more; in all, two hundred and

thirty-two.

For the necessary supply of these with provisions, clothes, household

stuff, &c. (for all should be done among themselves), first, they must

have at least four butchers with their families (twenty persons), four

shoemakers with their families and each shoemaker two journeymen (for

every trade would increase the number of customers to every trade). This

is twenty-eight persons more.

They would then require a hatmaker, a glover, at least two ropemakers,

four tailors, three weavers of woollen and three weavers of linen, two

basket-makers, two common brewers, ten or twelve shop-keepers to furnish

chandlery and grocery wares, and as many for drapery and mercery, over

and above what they could work. This makes two-and-forty families more,

each at five in a family, which, is two hundred and ten persons; all the

labouring part of these must have at least two servants (the brewers

more), which I cast up at forty more.

Add to these two ministers, one clerk, one sexton or grave-digger, with

their families, two physicians, three apothecaries, two surgeons (less

there could not be, only that for the beginning it might be said the

physicians should be surgeons, and I take them so); this is forty-five

persons, besides servants; so that, in short--to omit many tradesmen more

who would be wanted among them--there would necessarily and voluntarily

follow to these twenty families of farmers at least six hundred more of

their own people.

It is no difficult thing to show that the ready money of 4,000 pounds

which the Government was to advance to those twenty farmers would employ

and pay, and consequently subsist, all these numerous dependants in the

works which must severally be done for them for the first year, after

which the farmers would begin to receive their own money back again; for

all these tradesmen must come to their own market to buy corn, flesh,

milk, butter, cheese, bacon, &c., which after the first year the farmers,

having no rent to pay, would have to spare sufficiently, and so take back

their own money with advantage. I need not go on to mention how, by

consequence provisions increasing and money circulating, this town should

increase in a very little time.

It was proposed also that for the encouragement of all the handicraftsmen

and labouring poor who, either as servants or as labourers for day-work,

assisted the farmers or other tradesmen, they should have every man three

acres of ground given them, with leave to build cottages upon the same,

the allotments to be upon the waste at the end of the cross-roads where

they entered the town.

In the centre of the square was laid out a circle of twelve acres of

ground, to be cast into streets for inhabitants to build on as their

ability would permit--all that would build to have ground gratis for

twenty years, timber out of the forest, and convenient yards, gardens,

and orchards allotted to every house.

In the great streets near where they cross each other was to be built a

handsome market-house, with a town-hall for parish or corporation

business, doing justice and the like; also shambles; and in a handsome

part of the ground mentioned to be laid out for streets, as near the

centre as might be, was to be ground laid out for the building a church,

which every man should either contribute to the building of in money, or

give every tenth day of his time to assist in labouring at the building.

I have omitted many tradesmen who would be wanted here, and would find a

good livelihood among their country-folks only to get accidental work as

day-men or labourers (of which such a town would constantly employ many),

as also poor women for assistance in families (such as midwives, nurses,

&c.).

Adjacent to the town was to be a certain quantity of common-land for the

benefit of the cottages, that the poor might have a few sheep or cows, as

their circumstances required; and this to be appointed at the several

ends of the town.

There was a calculation made of what increase there would be, both of

wealth and people, in twenty years in this town; what a vast consumption

of provisions they would cause, more than the four thousand acres of land

given them would produce, by which consumption and increase so much

advantage would accrue to the public stock, and so many subjects be added

to the many thousands of Great Britain, who in the next age would be all

true-born Englishmen, and forget both the language and nation from whence

they came. And it was in order to this that two ministers were

appointed, one of which should officiate in English and the other in High

Dutch, and withal to have them obliged by a law to teach all their

children both to speak, read, and write the English language.

Upon their increase they would also want barbers and glaziers, painters

also, and plumbers; a windmill or two, and the millers and their

families; a fulling-mill and a cloth-worker; as also a master clothier or

two for making a manufacture among them for their own wear, and for

employing the women and children; a dyer or two for dyeing their

manufactures; and, which above all is not to be omitted, four families at

least of smiths, with every one two servants--considering that, besides

all the family work which continually employs a smith, all the shoeing of

horses, all the ironwork of ploughs, carts, waggons, harrows, &c., must

be wrought by them. There was no allowance made for inns and ale-houses,

seeing it would be frequent that those who kept public-houses of any sort

would likewise have some other employment to carry on.

This was the scheme for settling the Palatinates, by which means twenty

families of farmers, handsomely set up and supported, would lay a

foundation, as I have said, for six or seven hundred of the rest of their

people; and as the land in New Forest is undoubtedly good, and capable of

improvement by such cultivation, so other wastes in England are to be

found as fruitful as that; and twenty such villages might have been

erected, the poor strangers maintained, and the nation evidently be

bettered by it. As to the money to be advanced, which in the case of

twenty such settlements, at 1,000 pounds each, would be 80,000 pounds,

two things were answered to it:--

1. That the annual rent to be received for all those lands after twenty

years would abundantly pay the public for the first disburses on the

scheme above, that rent being then to amount to 40,000 pounds per annum.

2. More money than would have done this was expended, or rather thrown

away, upon them here, to keep them in suspense, and afterwards starve

them; sending them a-begging all over the nation, and shipping them off

to perish in other countries. Where the mistake lay is none of my

business to inquire.

I reserved this account for this place, because I passed in this journey

over the very spot where the design was laid out--namely, near Lyndhurst,

in the road from Rumsey to Lymington, whither I now directed my course.

Lymington is a little but populous seaport standing opposite to the Isle

of Wight, in the narrow part of the strait which ships sometimes pass

through in fair weather, called the Needles; and right against an ancient

town of that island called Yarmouth, and which, in distinction from the

great town of Yarmouth in Norfolk, is called South Yarmouth. This town

of Lymington is chiefly noted for making fine salt, which is indeed

excellent good; and from whence all these south parts of England are

supplied, as well by water as by land carriage; and sometimes, though not

often, they send salt to London, when, contrary winds having kept the

Northern fleets back, the price at London has been very high; but this is

very seldom and uncertain. Lymington sends two members to Parliament,

and this and her salt trade is all I can say to her; for though she is

very well situated as to the convenience of shipping I do not find they

have any foreign commerce, except it be what we call smuggling and

roguing; which, I may say, is the reigning commerce of all this part of

the English coast, from the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End of

Cornwall.

From hence there are but few towns on the sea-coast west, though there

are several considerable rivers empty themselves into the sea; nor are

there any harbours or seaports of any note except Poole. As for

Christchurch, though it stands at the mouth of the Avon (which, as I have

said, comes down from Salisbury, and brings with it all the waters of the

south and east parts of Wiltshire, and receives also the Stour and

Piddle, two Dorsetshire rivers which bring with them all the waters of

the north part of Dorsetshire), yet it is a very inconsiderable poor

place, scarce worth seeing, and less worth mentioning in this account,

only that it sends two members to Parliament, which many poor towns in

this part of England do, as well as that.

From hence I stepped up into the country north-west, to see the ancient

town of Wimborne, or Wimborneminster; there I found nothing remarkable

but the church, which is indeed a very great one, ancient, and yet very

well built, with a very firm, strong, square tower, considerably high;

but was, without doubt, much finer, when on the top of it stood a most

exquisite spire--finer and taller, if fame lies not, than that at

Salisbury, and by its situation in a plainer, flatter country visible, no

question, much farther; but this most beautiful ornament was blown down

by a sudden tempest of wind, as they tell us, in the year 1622.

The church remains a venerable piece of antiquity, and has in it the

remains of a place once much more in request than it is now, for here are

the monuments of several noble families, and in particular of one king,

viz., King Etheldred, who was slain in battle by the Danes. He was a

prince famed for piety and religion, and, according to the zeal of these

times, was esteemed as a martyr, because, venturing his life against the

Danes, who were heathens, he died fighting for his religion and his

country. The inscription upon his grave is preserved, and has been

carefully repaired, so as to be easily read, and is as follows:--

"In hoc loco quiescit Corpus S. Etheldredi, Regis West Saxonum,

Martyris, qui Anno Dom. DCCCLXXII., xxiii Aprilis, per Manos Danorum

Paganorum Occubuit."