From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" — John Shaqi
From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"Defoe, Daniel
History
From London to Land's End: and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman"
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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