it; and indeed your owne actions are the best _Heralds_ of your owne praise, which in spite of envy it selfe must speake you Wise, and truly Noble: and I for my part, if I may but present any thing, which either for its profit or delight may obtaine your favourable approbation, I have already reaped the harvest of my expectation; onely I must desire you to pardon my bold presumption, as thus to make your well deserving name, the frontispeece to so rude and ill deserving frame. Thus wishing a confluence of all blessings both of the throne, and foot-stoole, to be multiplied upon your selfe, and your vertuous Consort, my very good Lady, together with all the Stemmes of your Noble family, I take my leave and rest, _Your Worships to serve and be commanded_, W. W. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] To the Reader. Courteous Reader, _Though I will promise thee no such voluminous discourse, as many have made upon a scanter subject, (though they have travailed no further than the smoake of their owne native chimnies) yet dare I presume to present thee with the true, and faithfull relation of some few yeares travels and experience, wherein I would be loath to broach any thing which may puzzle thy beleefe, and so justly draw upon my selfe, that unjust aspersion commonly laid on travailers; of whom many say, They may lye by authority, because none can controule them; which Proverbe had surely his originall from the sleepy beleefe of many a home-bred Dormouse, who comprehends not either the raritie or possibility of those things he sees not, to whom the most classicke relations seeme riddles, and paradoxes: of whom it may be said as once of _Diogenes_, that because he circled himselfe in the circumference of a tubbe, he therefore contemned the Port and Pallace of _Alexander_, which he knew not. So there is many a tub-brain'd Cynicke, who because any thing stranger than ordinary, is too large for the straite hoopes of his apprehension, he peremptorily concludes it is a lye: But I decline this sort of thicke-witted readers, and dedicate the mite of my endeavours to my more credulous, ingenious, and lesse censorious Country-men, for whose sake I undertooke this worke; and I did it the rather, because there hath some relations heretofore past the Presse, which have beene very imperfect; as also because there hath beene many scandalous and false reports past upon the Country, even from the sulphurious breath of every base ballad-monger: wherefore to perfect the one, and take off the other, I have laid downe the nature of the Country, without any partiall respect unto it, as being my dwelling place where I have lived