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
The present Vice-Chancellor is Dr. Snape, formerly Master of Eaton School
near Windsor, and famous for his dispute with, and evident advantage
over, the late Bishop of Bangor in the time of his government; the
dispute between the University and the Master of Trinity College has been
brought to a head so as to employ the pens of the learned on both sides,
but at last prosecuted in a judicial way so as to deprive Dr. Bentley of
all his dignities and offices in the university; but the doctor flying to
the royal protection, the university is under a writ of mandamus, to show
cause why they do not restore the doctor again, to which it seems they
demur, and that demur has not, that we hear, been argued, at least when
these sheets were sent to the press. What will be the issue time must
show.
From Cambridge the road lies north-west on the edge of the fens to
Huntingdon, where it joins the great north road. On this side it is all
an agreeable corn country as above, adorned with several seats of
gentlemen; but the chief is the noble house, seat, or mansion of Wimple
or Wimple Hall, formerly built at a vast expense by the late Earl of
Radnor, adorned with all the natural beauties of situation, and to which
was added all the most exquisite contrivances which the best heads could
invent to make it artificially as well as naturally pleasant.
However, the fate of the Radnor family so directing, it was bought with
the whole estate about it by the late Duke of Newcastle, in a partition
of whose immense estate it fell to the Right Honourable the Lord Harley,
son and heir-apparent of the present Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, in
right of the Lady Harriet Cavendish, only daughter of the said Duke of
Newcastle, who is married to his lordship, and brought him this estate
and many other, sufficient to denominate her the richest heiress in Great
Britain.
Here his lordship resides, and has already so recommended himself to this
county as to be by a great majority chosen Knight of the Shire for the
county of Cambridge.
From Cambridge, my design obliging me, and the direct road in part
concurring, I came back through the west part of the county of Essex, and
at Saffron Walden I saw the ruins of the once largest and most
magnificent pile in all this part of England—viz., Audley End—built by,
and decaying with, the noble Dukes and Earls of Suffolk.
A little north of this part of the country rises the River Stour, which
for a course of fifty miles or more parts the two counties of Suffolk and
Essex, passing through or near Haveril, Clare, Cavendish, Halsted,
Sudbury, Bowers, Nayland, Stretford, Dedham, Manningtree, and into the
sea at Harwich, assisting by its waters to make one of the best harbours
for shipping that is in Great Britain—I mean Orwell Haven or Harwich, of
which I have spoken largely already.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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