Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722Defoe, Daniel
History
Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722
Defoe, Daniel
England -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
3. The workhouse, being lately enlarged, and to which belongs a
corporation or a body of the inhabitants, consisting of sixty persons
incorporated by Act of Parliament Anno 1698 for taking care of the poor.
They are incorporated by the name and title of the governor, deputy
governor, assistants, and guardians of the poor of the town of
Colchester. They are in number eight-and-forty, to whom are added the
mayor and aldermen for the time being, who are always guardians by the
same charter. These make the number of sixty, as above. There is also a
grammar free-school, with a good allowance to the master, who is chosen
by the town.
4. The castle of Colchester is now become only a monument showing the
antiquity of the place, it being built as the walls of the town also are,
with Roman bricks, and the Roman coins dug up here, and ploughed up in
the fields adjoining, confirm it. The inhabitants boast much that
Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, first Christian Emperor of
the Romans, was born there, and it may be so for aught we know. I only
observe what Mr. Camden says of the Castle of Colchester, viz.: In the
middle of this city stands a castle ready to fall with age.
Though this castle has stood one hundred and twenty years from the time
Mr. Camden wrote that account, and it is not fallen yet, nor will another
hundred and twenty years, I believe, make it look one jot the older. And
it was observable that in the late siege of this town, a common shot,
which the besiegers made at this old castle, were so far from making it
fall, that they made little or no impression upon it; for which reason,
it seems, and because the garrison made no great use of it against the
besiegers, they fired no more at it.
There are two charity schools set up here, and carried on by a generous
subscription, with very good success.
The title of Colchester is in the family of Earl Rivers, and the eldest
son of that family is called Lord Colchester, though as I understand, the
title is not settled by the creation to the eldest son till he enjoys the
title of earl with it, but that the other is by the courtesy of England;
however, this I take _ad referendum_.
From Colchester I took another step down to the coast; the land running
out a great way into the sea, south and south-east makes that promontory
of land called the Naze, and well known to seamen using the northern
trade. Here one sees a sea open as an ocean without any opposite shore,
though it be no more than the mouth of the Thames. This point called the
Naze, and the north-east point of Kent, near Margate, called the North
Foreland, making what they call the mouth of the river and the port of
London, though it be here above sixty miles over.
At Walton-under-the-Naze they find on the shore copperas-stone in great
quantities; and there are several large works called copperas houses,
where they make it with great expense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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