The Norwich Road: An East Anglian HighwayHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; Norwich Road
Turning from general conditions of travelling to particular travellers,
there comes tripping along the road an antic fellow, one Will Kemp, who
danced from London to Norwich in the year 1600; a frolic he undertook
for a wager, afterwards writing and publishing a book about it, which
he called _Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder_. Will Kemp was accompanied by
a drummer whose play upon parchment helped to sustain his flagging
energies as he skipped it to Widford and thence by a route of his own
through Braintree to Norwich.
Sprightly, irresponsible Kemp, cracking weak jokes and playing the
fool, is succeeded in the memories of the road, after an interval of
some eighty years, by a very grave and responsible figure indeed;
no less an one than that of King William the Third, on his frequent
journeys between his dear Holland and his little-loved Kingdom of
England. Burdened with the care of an alien realm, that saturnine
little figure with the hooked nose was a familiar sight at Kelvedon,
where, travelling to and from Harwich, he was wont to stay at the
"Angel" inn, which still confronts the wayfarer on entering the village
from London. When the "little gentleman in black" had done his work
and King William of blessed Protestant memory was no more, the Norwich
Road, so far as Colchester, was still graced with Royal travellers,
for, with the coming of the Hanoverians, Harwich became more than ever
a favourite port of entry and departure, and the choleric early Georges
knew this Essex landscape well. This way, too, came the Schwellenburgs,
the Keilmanseggs and the other vulgar and grotesque figures of that
grotesque and vulgar Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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