"Here rests the Body of Holy Etheldred, King of the West Saxons, and
Martyr, who fell by the Hands of the Pagan Danes in the Year of our
Lord 872, the 23rd of April."
Here are also the monuments of the great Marchioness of Exeter, mother of
Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and last of the family of Courtneys
who enjoyed that honour; as also of John de Beaufort, Duke of Somerset,
and his wife, grandmother of King Henry VII., by her daughter Margaret,
Countess of Richmond.
This last lady I mention because she was foundress of a very fine free
school, which has since been enlarged and had a new benefactress in Queen
Elizabeth, who has enlarged the stipend and annexed it to the foundation.
The famous Cardinal Pole was Dean of this church before his exaltation.
Having said this of the church, I have said all that is worth naming of
the town; except that the inhabitants, who are many and poor, are chiefly
maintained by the manufacture of knitting stockings, which employs great
part indeed of the county of Dorset, of which this is the first town
eastward.
South of this town, over a sandy, wild, and barren country, we came to
Poole, a considerable seaport, and indeed the most considerable in all
this part of England; for here I found some ships, some merchants, and
some trade; especially, here were a good number of ships fitted out every
year to the Newfoundland fishing, in which the Poole men were said to
have been particularly successful for many years past.
The town sits in the bottom of a great bay or inlet of the sea, which,
entering at one narrow mouth, opens to a very great breadth within the
entrance, and comes up to the very shore of this town; it runs also west
up almost to the town of Wareham, a little below which it receives the
rivers Frome and Piddle, the two principal rivers of the county.
This place is famous for the best and biggest oysters in all this part of
England, which the people of Poole pretend to be famous for pickling; and
they are barrelled up here, and sent not only to London, but to the West
Indies, and to Spain and Italy, and other parts. It is observed more
pearls are found in the Poole oysters, and larger, than in any other
oysters about England.
As the entrance into this large bay is narrow, so it is made narrower by
an island, called Branksey, which, lying the very mouth of the passage,
divides it into two, and where there is an old castle, called Branksey
Castle, built to defend the entrance, and this strength was very great
advantage to the trade of this port in the time of the late war with
France.
Wareham is a neat town and full of people, having a share of trade with
Poole itself; it shows the ruins of a large town, and, it is apparent,
has had eight churches, of which they have three remaining.
South of Wareham, and between the bay I have mentioned and the sea, lies
a large tract of land which, being surrounded by the sea except on one
side, is called an island, though it is really what should be called a
peninsula. This tract of land is better inhabited than the sea-coast of
this west end of Dorsetshire generally is, and the manufacture of
stockings is carried on there also; it is called the Isle of Purbeck, and
has in the middle of it a large market-town, called Corfe, and from the
famous castle there the whole town is now called Corfe Castle; it is a
corporation, sending members to Parliament.
This part of the country is eminent for vast quarries of stone, which is
cut out flat, and used in London in great quantities for paving
courtyards, alleys, avenues to houses, kitchens, footways on the sides of
the High Streets, and the like; and is very profitable to the place, as
also in the number of shipping employed in bringing it to London. There
are also several rocks of very good marble, only that the veins in the
stone are not black and white, as the Italian, but grey, red, and other
colours.
From hence to Weymouth, which is 22 miles, we rode in view of the sea;
the country is open, and in some respects pleasant, but not like the
northern parts of the county, which are all fine carpet-ground, soft as
velvet, and the herbage sweet as garden herbs, which makes their sheep be
the best in England, if not in the world, and their wool fine to an
extreme.
I cannot omit here a small adventure which was very surprising to me on
this journey; passing this plain country, we came to an open piece of
ground where a neighbouring gentleman had at a great expense laid out a
proper piece of land for a decoy, or duck-coy, as some call it. The
works were but newly done, the planting young, the ponds very large and
well made; but the proper places for shelter of the fowl not covered, the
trees not being grown, and men were still at work improving and enlarging
and planting on the adjoining heath or common. Near the decoy-keeper's
house were some places where young decoy ducks were hatched, or otherwise
kept to fit them for their work. To preserve them from vermin (polecats,
kites, and such like), they had set traps, as is usual in such cases, and
a gibbet by it, where abundance of such creatures as were taken were
hanged up for show.
While the decoy-man was busy showing the new works, he was alarmed with a
great cry about this house for "Help! help!" and away he ran like the
wind, guessing, as we supposed, that something was catched in the trap.
It was a good big boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old, that cried
out, for coming to the place he found a great fowl caught by the leg in
the trap, which yet was so strong and so outrageous that the boy going
too near him, he flew at him and frighted him, bit him, and beat him with
his wings, for he was too strong for the boy; as the master ran from the
decoy, so another manservant ran from the house, and finding a strange
creature fast in the trap, not knowing what it was, laid at him with a
great stick. The creature fought him a good while, but at length he
struck him an unlucky blow which quieted him; after this we all came up
to see what the matter, and found a monstrous eagle caught by the leg in
the trap, and killed by the fellow's cudgel, as above.
When the master came to know what it was, and that his man had killed it,
he was ready to kill the fellow for his pains, for it was a noble
creature indeed, and would have been worth a great deal to the man to
have it shown about the country, or to have sold to any gentleman curious
in such things; but the eagle was dead, and there we left it. It is
probable this eagle had flown over the sea from France, either there or
at the Isle of Wight, where the channel is not so wide; for we do not
find that any eagles are known to breed in those parts of Britain.
From hence we turned up to Dorchester, the county town, though not the
largest town in the county. Dorchester is indeed a pleasant agreeable
town to live in, and where I thought the people seemed less divided into
factions and parties than in other places; for though here are divisions,
and the people are not all of one mind, either as to religion or
politics, yet they did not seem to separate with so much animosity as in
other places. Here I saw the Church of England clergyman, and the
Dissenting minister or preacher drinking tea together, and conversing
with civility and good neighbourhood, like Catholic Christians and men of
a Catholic and extensive charity. The town is populous, though not
large; the streets broad, but the buildings old and low. However, there
is good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat
in this world might as agreeably spend his time and as well in Dorchester
as in any town I know in England.
The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come up on, every
side, even to the very streets' end; and here it was that they told me
that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed on the downs within six
miles of the town--that is, six miles every way, which is twelve miles in
diameter, and thirty-six miles in circumference. This, I say, I was
told--I do not affirm it to be true; but when I viewed the country round,
I confess I could not but incline to believe it.
It is observable of these sheep that they are exceeding fruitful, the
ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they are for that reason bought by
all the farmers through the east part of England, who come to Burford
Fair in this country to buy them, and carry them into Kent and Surrey
eastward, and into Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire
north; even our Banstead Downs in Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is
supplied from this place. The grass or herbage of these downs is full of
the sweetest and the most aromatic plants, such as nourish the sheep to a
strange degree; and the sheep's dung, again, nourishes that herbage to a
strange degree; so that the valleys are rendered extremely fruitful by
the washing of the water in hasty showers from off these hills.
An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire, the next
county to this; for it is the same thing in proportion over this whole
county. I was told that at this town there was a meadow on the bank of
the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury, which was let for 12
pounds a year per acre for the grass only. This I inquired particularly
after at the place, and was assured by the inhabitants, as one man, that
the fact was true, and was showed the meadows. The grass which grew on
them was such as grew to the length of ten or twelve feet, rising up to a
good height and then taking root again, and was of so rich a nature as to
answer very well such an extravagant rent.
The reason they gave for this was the extraordinary richness of the soil,
made so, as above, by the falling or washing of the rains from the hills
adjacent, by which, though no other land thereabouts had such a kind of
grass, yet all other meadows and low grounds of the valley were extremely
rich in proportion.
There are abundance of good families, and of very ancient lines in the
neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the Courtneys,
Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells, Sydenhams, and many others,
some of which have very great estates in the county, and in particular
Colonel Strangeways, Napier, and Courtney. The first of these is master
of the famous swannery or nursery of swans, the like of which, I believe,
is not in Europe. I wonder any man should pretend to travel over this
country, and pass by it, too, and then write his account and take no
notice of it.
From Dorchester it is six miles to the seaside south, and the ocean in
view almost all the way. The first town you come to is Weymouth, or
Weymouth and Melcombe, two towns lying at the mouth of a little rivulet
which they call the Wey, but scarce claims the name of a river. However,
the entrance makes a very good though small harbour, and they are joined
by a wooden bridge; so that nothing but the harbour parts them; yet they
are separate corporations, and choose each of them two members of
Parliament, just as London and Southwark.
Weymouth is a sweet, clean, agreeable town, considering its low
situation, and close to the sea; it is well built, and has a great many
good substantial merchants in it who drive a considerable trade, and have
a good number of ships belonging to the town. They carry on now, in time
of peace, a trade with France; but, besides this, they trade also to
Portugal, Spain, Newfoundland, and Virginia; and they have a large
correspondence also up in the country for the consumption of their
returns; especially the wine trade and the Newfoundland trade are
considerable here.
Without the harbour is an old castle, called Sandfoot Castle; and over
against them, where there is a good road for ships to put in on occasions
of bad weather, is Portland Castle, and the road is called Portland Road.
While I was here once, there came a merchant-ship into that road called
Portland Road under a very hard storm of wind; she was homeward bound
from Oporto for London, laden with wines; and as she came in she made
signals of distress to the town, firing guns for help, and the like, as
is usual in such cases; it was in the dark of the night that the ship
came in, and, by the help of her own pilot, found her way into the road,
where she came to an anchor, but, as I say, fired guns for help.
The venturous Weymouth men went off, even before it was light, with two
boats to see who she was, and what condition she was in; and found she
was come to an anchor, and had struck her topmasts; but that she had been
in bad weather, had lost an anchor and cable before, and had but one
cable to trust to, which did hold her, but was weak; and as the storm
continued to blow, they expected every hour to go on shore and split to
pieces.
Upon this the Weymouth boats came back with such diligence that in less
than three hours they were on board them again with an anchor and cable,
which they immediately bent in its place, and let go to assist the other,
and thereby secured the ship. It is true that they took a good price of
the master for the help they gave him; for they made him draw a bill on
his owners at London for 12 pounds for the use of the anchor, cable, and
boat, besides some gratuities to the men. But they saved the ship and
cargo by it, and in three or four days the weather was calm, and he
proceeded on his voyage, returning the anchor and cable again; so that,
upon the whole, it was not so extravagant as at first I thought it to be.
The Isle of Portland, on which the castle I mentioned stands, lies right
against this Port of Weymouth. Hence it is that our best and whitest
freestone comes, with which the Cathedral of St. Paul's, the Monument,
and all the public edifices in the City of London are chiefly built; and
it is wonderful, and well worth the observation of a traveller, to see
the quarries in the rocks from whence they are cut out, what stones, and
of what prodigious a size are cut out there.
The island is indeed little more than one continued rock of freestone,
and the height of the land is such that from this island they see in
clear weather above half over the Channel to France, though the Channel
here is very broad. The sea off of this island, and especially to the
west of it, is counted the most dangerous part of the British Channel.
Due south, there is almost a continued disturbance in the waters, by
reason of what they call two tides meeting, which I take to be no more
than the sets of the currents from the French coast and from the English
shore meeting: this they call Portland Race; and several ships, not aware
of these currents, have been embayed to the west of Portland, and been
driven on shore on the beach (of which I shall speak presently), and
there lost.
To prevent this danger, and guide the mariner in these distresses, they
have within these few months set up two lighthouses on the two points of
that island; and they had not been many months set up, with the
directions given to the public for their bearings, but we found three
outward-bound East India ships which were in distress in the night, in a
hard extreme gale of wind, were so directed by those lights that they
avoided going on shore by it, which, if the lights had not been there,
would inevitably happened to their destruction.
This island, though seemingly miserable, and thinly inhabited, yet the
inhabitants being almost all stone-cutters, we found there were no very
poor people among them, and when they collected money for the re-building
St. Paul's, they got more in this island than in the great town of
Dorchester, as we were told.
Though Portland stands a league off from the mainland of Britain, yet it
is almost joined by a prodigious riff of beach--that is to say, of small
stones cast up by the sea--which runs from the island so near the shore
of England that they ferry over with a boat and a rope, the water not
being above half a stone's-throw over; and the said riff of beach ending,
as it were, at that inlet of water, turns away west, and runs parallel
with the shore quite to Abbotsbury, which is a town about seven miles
beyond Weymouth.
I name this for two reasons: first, to explain again what I said before
of ships being embayed and lost here. This is when ships coming from the
westward omit to keep a good offing, or are taken short by contrary
winds, and cannot weather the high land of Portland, but are driven
between Portland and the mainland. If they can come to an anchor, and
ride it out, well and good; and if not, they run on shore on that vast
beach and are lost without remedy.
On the inside of this beach, and between it and the land, there is, as I
have said, an inlet of water which they ferry over, as above, to pass and
re-pass to and from Portland: this inlet opens at about two miles west,
and grows very broad, and makes a kind of lake within the land of a mile
and a half broad, and near three miles in length, the breadth unequal. At
the farthest end west of this water is a large duck-coy, and the verge of
the water well grown with wood, and proper groves of trees for cover for
the fowl: in the open lake, or broad part, is a continual assembly of
swans: here they live, feed, and breed, and the number of them is such
that, I believe, I did not see so few as 7,000 or 8,000. Here they are
protected, and here they breed in abundance. We saw several of them upon
the wing, very high in the air, whence we supposed that they flew over
the riff of beach, which parts the lake from the sea, to feed on the
shores as they thought fit, and so came home again at their leisure.
From this duck-coy west, the lake narrows, and at last almost closes,
till the beach joins the shore; and so Portland may be said, not to be an
island, but part of the continent. And now we came to Abbotsbury, a town
anciently famous for a great monastery, and now eminent for nothing but
its ruins.
From hence we went on to Bridport, a pretty large corporation town on the
sea-shore, though without a harbour. Here we saw boats all the way on
the shore, fishing for mackerel, which they take in the easiest manner
imaginable; for they fix one end of the net to a pole set deep into the
sand, then, the net being in a boat, they row right out into the water
some length, then turn and row parallel with the shore, veering out the
net all the while, till they have let go all the net, except the line at
the end, and then the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling the net
to the shore at both ends, bring to shore with it such fish as they
surrounded in the little way they rowed. This, at that time, proved to
be an incredible number, insomuch that the men could hardly draw them on
shore. As soon as the boats had brought their fish on shore we observed
a guard or watch placed on the shore in several places, who, we found,
had their eye, not on the fishermen, but on the country people who came
down to the shore to buy their fish; and very sharp we found they were,
and some that came with small carts were obliged to go back empty without
any fish. When we came to inquire into the particulars of this, we found
that these were officers placed on the shore by the justices and
magistrates of the towns about, who were ordered to prevent the country
farmers buying the mackerel to dung their land with them, which was
thought to be dangerous as to infection. In short, such was the plenty
of fish that year that the mackerel, the finest and largest I ever saw,
were sold at the seaside a hundred for a penny.
From Bridport (a town in which we see nothing remarkable) we came to
Lyme, the town particularly made famous by the landing of the Duke of
Monmouth and his unfortunate troops in the time of King James II., of
which I need say nothing, the history of it being so recent in the memory
of so many living.
This is a town of good figure, and has in it several eminent merchants
who carry on a considerable trade to France, Spain, Newfoundland, and the
Straits; and though they have neither creek or bay, road or river, they
have a good harbour, but it is such a one as is not in all Britain
besides, if there is such a one in any part of the world.
It is a massy pile of building, consisting of high and thick walls of
stone, raised at first with all the methods that skill and art could
devise, but maintained now with very little difficulty. The walls are
raised in the main sea at a good distance from the shore; it consists of
one main and solid wall of stone, large enough for carts and carriages to
pass on the top, and to admit houses and warehouses to be built on it, so
that it is broad as a street. Opposite to this, but farther into the
sea, is another wall of the same workmanship, which crosses the end of
the first wall and comes about with a tail parallel to the first wall.
Between the point of the first or main wall is the entrance into the
port, and the second or opposite wall, breaking the violence of the sea
from the entrance, the ships go into the basin as into a pier or harbour,
and ride there as secure as in a millpond or as in a wet dock.
The townspeople have the benefit of this wonderful harbour, and it is
carefully kept in repair, as indeed it behoves them to do; but they could
give me nothing of the history of it, nor do they, as I could perceive,
know anything of the original of it, or who built it. It was lately
almost beaten down by a storm, but is repaired again.
This work is called the Cobb. The Custom House officers have a lodge and
warehouse upon it, and there were several ships of very good force and
rich in value in the basin of it when I was there. It might be
strengthened with a fort, and the walls themselves are firm enough to
carry what guns they please to plant upon it; but they did not seem to
think it needful, and as the shore is convenient for batteries, they have
some guns planted in proper places, both for the defence of the Cobb and
the town also.
This town is under the government of a mayor and aldermen, and may pass
for a place of wealth, considering the bigness of it. Here, we found,
the merchants began to trade in the pilchard-fishing, though not to so
considerable a degree as they do farther west--the pilchards seldom
coming up so high eastward as Portland, and not very often so high as
Lyme.
It was in sight of these hills that Queen Elizabeth's fleet, under the
command of the Lord Howard of Effingham (then Admiral), began first to
engage in a close and resolved fight with the invincible Spanish Armada
in 1588, maintaining the fight, the Spaniards making eastward till they
came the length of Portland Race, where they gave it over--the Spaniards
having received considerable damage, and keeping then closer together.
Off of the same place was a desperate engagement in the year 1672 between
the English and Dutch, in which the Dutch were worsted and driven over to
the coast of France, and then glad to make home to refit and repair.
While we stayed here some time viewing this town and coast, we had
opportunity to observe the pleasant way of conversation as it is managed
among the gentlemen of this county and their families, which are, without
reflection, some of the most polite and well-bred people in the isle of
Britain. As their hospitality is very great, and their bounty to the
poor remarkable, so their generous friendly way of living with, visiting,
and associating one with another is as hard to be described as it is
really to be admired; they seem to have a mutual confidence in and
friendship with one another, as if they were all relations; nor did I
observe the sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among
the gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so much
known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet they
sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they see
occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters, which
the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England are
recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are scandalously
said to carry themselves to market, and where every night they meet at
the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and yet I observed that the
women do not seem to stick on hand so much in this country as in those
countries where those assemblies are so lately set up--the reason of
which, I cannot help saying, if my opinion may bear any weight, is that
the Dorsetshire ladies are equal in beauty, and may be superior in
reputation. In a word, their reputation seems here to be better kept,
guarded by better conduct, and managed with more prudence; and yet the
Dorsetshire ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled
about streets, or hide themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the whole
body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of behaviour, and
yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I nowhere see better in all
my observation through the whole isle of Britain. In this little
interval also I visited some of the biggest towns in the north-west part
of this county, as Blandford--a town on the River Stour in the road
between Salisbury and Dorchester--a handsome well-built town, but chiefly
famous for making the finest bone-lace in England, and where they showed
me some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be had. But
it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in that county,
such as no part of England can equal.
From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly called Strabridge. The
town and the country around is employed in the manufacture of stockings,
and which was once famous for making the finest, best, and highest-prize
knit stocking in England; but that trade now is much decayed by the
increase of the knitting-stocking engine or frame, which has destroyed
the hand-knitting trade for fine stockings through the whole kingdom, of
which I shall speak more in its place.
From hence I came to Sherborne, a large and populous town, with one
collegiate or conventual church, and may properly claim to have more
inhabitants in it than any town in Dorsetshire, though it is neither the
county-town, nor does it send members to Parliament. The church is still
a reverend pile, and shows the face of great antiquity. Here begins the
Wiltshire medley clothing (though this town be in Dorsetshire), of which
I shall speak at large in its place, and therefore I omit any discourse
of it here.
Shaftesbury is also on the edge of this county, adjoining to Wiltshire
and Dorsetshire, being fourteen miles from Salisbury, over that fine down
or carpet ground which they call particularly or properly Salisbury
Plain. It has neither house nor town in view all the way; and the road,
which often lies very broad and branches off insensibly, might easily
cause a traveller to lose his way. But there is a certain never-failing
assistance upon all these downs for telling a stranger his way, and that
is the number of shepherds feeding or keeping their vast flocks of sheep
which are everywhere in the way, and who with a very little pains a
traveller may always speak with. Nothing can be like it. The Arcadians'
plains, of which we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets, could be
nothing to them.
This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a high hill, which
closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presents you a new scene or
prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is all enclosed, and
grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge-rows; the country rich,
fertile, and populous; the towns and houses standing thick and being
large and full of inhabitants, and those inhabitants fully employed in
the richest and most valuable manufacture in the world--viz., the English
clothing, as well the medley or mixed clothing as whites, as well for the
home trade as the foreign trade, of which I shall take leave to be very
particular in my return through the west and north part of Wiltshire in
the latter part of this work.
In my return to my western progress, I passed some little part of
Somersetshire, as through Evil or Yeovil, upon the River Ivil, in going
to which we go down a long steep hill, which they call Babylon Hill, but
from what original I could find none of the country people to inform me.
This Yeovil is a market-town of good resort; and some clothing is carried
on in and near it, but not much. Its main manufacture at this time is
making of gloves.
It cannot pass my observation here that when we are come this length from
London the dialect of the English tongue, or the country way of
expressing themselves, is not easily understood--it is so strangely
altered. It is true that it is so in many parts of England besides, but
in none in so gross a degree as in this part. This way of boorish
country speech, as in Ireland it is called the "brogue" upon the tongue,
so here it is called "jouring;" and it is certain that though the tongue
be all mere natural English, yet those that are but a little acquainted
with them cannot understand one-half of what they say. It is not
possible to explain this fully by writing, because the difference is not
so much in the orthography of words as in the tone and diction--their
abridging the speech, "cham" for "I am," "chil" for "I will," "don" for
"put on," and "doff" for "put off," and the like. And I cannot omit a
short story here on this subject. Coming to a relation's house, who was
a school-master at Martock, in Somersetshire, I went into his school to
beg the boys a play-day, as is usual in such cases (I should have said,
to beg the master a play-day. But that by the way). Coming into the
school, I observed one of the lowest scholars was reading his lesson to
the usher, which lesson, it seems, was a chapter in the Bible. So I sat
down by the master till the boy had read out his chapter. I observed the
boy read a little oddly in the tone of the country, which made me the
more attentive, because on inquiry I found that the words were the same
and the orthography the same as in all our Bibles. I observed also the
boy read it out with his eyes still on the book and his head (like a mere
boy) moving from side to side as the lines reached cross the columns of
the book. His lesson was in the Canticles, v. 3 of chap. v. The words
these:--"I have put off my coat. How shall I put it on? I have washed
my feet. How shall I defile them?"
The boy read thus, with his eyes, as I say, full on the text:--"Chav a
doffed my cooat. How shall I don't? Chav a washed my veet. How shall I
moil 'em?"
How the dexterous dunce could form his month to express so readily the
words (which stood right printed in the book) in his country jargon, I
could not but admire. I shall add to this another piece as diverting,
which also happened in my knowledge at this very town of Yeovil, though
some years ago.
There lived a good substantial family in the town not far from the "Angel
Inn"--a well-known house, which was then, and, I suppose, is still, the
chief inn of the town. This family had a dog which, among his other good
qualities for which they kept him (for he was a rare house-dog), had this
bad one--that he was a most notorious thief, but withal so cunning a dog,
and managed himself so warily, that he preserved a mighty good reputation
among the neighbourhood. As the family was well beloved in the town, so
was the dog. He was known to be a very useful servant to them,
especially in the night (when he was fierce as a lion; but in the day the
gentlest, lovingest creature that could be), and, as they said, all the
neighbours had a good word for this dog.
It happened that the good wife or mistress at the "Angel Inn" had
frequently missed several pieces of meat out of the pail, as they say--or
powdering-tub, as we call it--and that some were very large pieces. It
is also to be observed the dog did not stay to eat what he took upon the
spot, in which case some pieces or bones or fragments might be left, and
so it might be discovered to be a dog; but he made cleaner work, and when
he fastened upon a piece of meat he was sure to carry it quite away to
such retreats as he knew he could be safe in, and so feast upon it at
leisure.
It happened at last, as with most thieves it does, that the inn-keeper
was too cunning for him, and the poor dog was nabbed, taken in the fact,
and could make no defence.
Having found the thief and got him in custody, the master of the house, a
good-humoured fellow, and loth to disoblige the dog's master by executing
the criminal, as the dog law directs, mitigates his sentence, and handled
him as follows:--First, taking out his knife, he cut off both his ears;
and then, bringing him to the threshold, he chopped off his tail. And
having thus effectually dishonoured the poor cur among his neighbours, he
tied a string about his neck, and a piece of paper to the string,
directed to his master, and with these witty West Country verses on it:--
"To my honoured master, --- Esq.
"Hail master a cham a' com hoam,
So cut as an ape, and tail have I noan,
For stealing of beef and pork out of the pail,
For thease they'v cut my ears, for th' wother my tail;
Nea measter, and us tell thee more nor that
And's come there again, my brains will be flat."
I could give many more accounts of the different dialects of the people
of this country, in some of which they are really not to be understood;
but the particulars have little or no diversion in them. They carry it
such a length that we see their "jouring" speech even upon their
monuments and grave-stones; as, for example, even in some of the
churchyards of the city of Bristol I saw this excellent poetry after some
other lines:--
"And when that thou doest hear of thick,
Think of the glass that runneth quick."
But I proceed into Devonshire. From Yeovil we came to Crookorn, thence
to Chard, and from thence into the same road I was in before at Honiton.
This is a large and beautiful market-town, very populous and well built,
and is so very remarkably paved with small pebbles that on either side
the way a little channel is left shouldered up on the sides of it, so
that it holds a small stream of fine clear running water, with a little
square dipping-place left at every door; so that every family in the town
has a clear, clean running river (as it may be called) just at their own
door, and this so much finer, so much pleasanter, and agreeable to look
on than that at Salisbury (which they boast so much of), that, in my
opinion, there is no comparison.
Here we see the first of the great serge manufacture of Devonshire--a
trade too great to be described in miniature, as it must be if I
undertake it here, and which takes up this whole county, which is the
largest and most populous in England, Yorkshire excepted (which ought to
be esteemed three counties, and is, indeed, divided as such into the
East, West, and North Riding). But Devonshire, one entire county, is so
full of great towns, and those towns so full of people, and those people
so universally employed in trade and manufactures, that not only it
cannot be equalled in England, but perhaps not in Europe.
In my travel through Dorsetshire I ought to have observed that the
biggest towns in that county sent no members to Parliament, and that the
smallest did--that is to say that Sherborne, Blandford, Wimborneminster,
Stourminster, and several other towns choose no members; whereas
Weymouth, Melcombe, and Bridport were all burgess towns. But now we come
to Devonshire we find almost all the great towns, and some smaller,
choosing members also. It is true there are some large populous towns
that do not choose, but then there are so many that do, that the county
seems to have no injustice, for they send up six-and-twenty members.
However, as I say above, there are several great towns which do not
choose Parliament men, of which Bideford is one, Crediton or Kirton
another, Ilfracombe a third; but, those excepted, the principal towns in
the county do all choose members of Parliament.
Honiton is one of those, and may pass not only for a pleasant good town,
as before, but stands in the best and pleasantest part of the whole
county, and I cannot but recommend it to any gentlemen that travel this
road, that if they please to observe the prospect for half a mile till
their coming down the hill and to the entrance into Honiton, the view of
the country is the most beautiful landscape in the world--a mere
picture--and I do not remember the like in any one place in England. It
is observable that the market of this town was kept originally on the
Sunday, till it was changed by the direction of King John.
From Honiton the country is exceeding pleasant still, and on the road
they have a beautiful prospect almost all the way to Exeter (which is
twelve miles). On the left-hand of this road lies that part of the
county which they call the South Hams, and which is famous for the best
cider in that part of England; also the town of St.-Mary-Ottery, commonly
called St. Mary Autree. They tell us the name is derived from the River
Ottery, and that from the multitude of otters found always in that river,
which however, to me, seems fabulous. Nor does there appear to be any
such great number of otters in that water, or in the county about, more
than is usual in other counties or in other parts of the county about
them. They tell us they send twenty thousand hogsheads of cider hence
every year to London, and (which is still worse) that it is most of it
bought there by the merchants to mix with their wines--which, if true, is
not much to the reputation of the London vintners. But that by-the-bye.
From hence we came to Exeter, a city famous for two things which we
seldom find unite in the same town--viz., that it is full of gentry and
good company, and yet full of trade and manufactures also. The serge
market held here every week is very well worth a stranger's seeing, and
next to the Brigg Market at Leeds, in Yorkshire, is the greatest in
England. The people assured me that at this market is generally sold
from sixty to seventy to eighty, and sometimes a hundred, thousand pounds
value in serges in a week. I think it is kept on Mondays.
They have the River Esk here, a very considerable river, and principal in
the whole county; and within three miles, or thereabouts, it receives
ships of any ordinary burthen, the port there being called Topsham. But
now by the application, and at the expense, of the citizens the channel
of the river is so widened, deepened, and cleansed from the shoal, which
would otherwise interrupt the navigation, that the ships come now quite
up to the city, and there with ease both deliver and take in their
lading.
This city drives a very great correspondence with Holland, as also
directly to Portugal, Spain, and Italy--shipping off vast quantities of
their woollen manufactures especially to Holland, the Dutch giving very
large commissions here for the buying of serges perpetuans, and such
goods; which are made not only in and about Exeter, but at Crediton,
Honiton, Culliton, St.-Mary-Ottery, Newton Bushel, Ashburton, and
especially at Tiverton, Cullompton, Bampton, and all the north-east part
of the county--which part of the county is, as it may be said, fully
employed, the people made rich, and the poor that are properly so called
well subsisted and employed by it.
Exeter is a large, rich, beautiful, populous, and was once a very strong
city; but as to the last, as the castle, the walls, and all the old works
are demolished, so, were they standing, the way of managing sieges and
attacks of towns is such now, and so altered from what it was in those
days, that Exeter in the utmost strength it could ever boast would not
now hold out five days open trenches--nay, would hardly put an army to
the trouble of opening trenches against it at all. This city was famous
in the late civil unnatural war for its loyalty to the king, and for
being a sanctuary to the queen, where her Majesty resided for some time,
and here she was delivered of a daughter, being the Princess Henrietta
Maria, of whom our histories give a particular account, so I need say no
more of it here.
The cathedral church of this city is an ancient beauty, or, as it may be
said, it is beautiful for its antiquity; but it has been so fully and
often described that it would look like a mere copying from others to
mention it. There is a good library kept in it, in which are some
manuscripts, and particularly an old missal or mass-book, the leaves of
vellum, and famous for its most exquisite writing.
This county, and this part of it in particular, has been famous for the
birth of several eminent men as well for learning as for arts and for
war, as particularly:--
1. Sir William Petre, who the learned Dr. Wake (now Archbishop of
Canterbury, and author of the Additions to Mr. Camden) says was Secretary
of State and Privy Councillor to King Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen
Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, and seven times sent ambassador into foreign
countries.
2. Sir Thomas Bodley, famous and of grateful memory to all learned men
and lovers of letters for his collecting and establishing the best
library in Britain, which is now at Oxford, and is called, after his
name, the Bodleian Library to this day.