In his “Addenda,” Johnson afterwards says, “I find some worthy gentlemen still of opinion, that Cliff … was not unhealthy in the age of the Councils:” and he truly quotes charters from the Textus Roffensis, to show that the northern marshes, or levels, then already existed; and he urges that it “was, therefore, altogether unfit for a stated place of synod.” That “As Cliff in Hoo was never a place of great note itself, so it lies, and ever did lie, out of the road to any place of note;” and he goes on to recite Somner and Camden’s plea of the greater likelihood of Abingdon, for synods limited to the times of Mercian domination. But the marshes are not in question, they are but an appendage to the Hoo. This peninsula is formed of a large fragment of the chalk at the eastern end of the North Kentish downs, called by geologists an “inlier” into the Thames basin; upon the heights, and in the valleys, of which the places concerned in this enquiry were situated. The marshes are a broad fringe of level pasture land,[58] advanced into the Thames estuary, beyond its north chalk cliff. In Kent the word “marsh” signifies the same as “more” in Somersetshire: which, although even Dr. Jamieson confounds the two, is a totally different word and thing, from the “muir,” or “moor,” for waste lands of a highland character. It is to such land as this that we owe the dairies of Cheddar; and if this objection should be good, Glastonbury and Wells, not to mention Ely and Croyland, must resign their venerable places in history. A very similar projection of alluvial level pasture extends from Henbury and Shirehampton to the Bristol Channel, without disparagement of their salubrity. Mr. Johnson, having suffered much in health by a residence of a year or two at Appledore, in Kent, obtained the vicarage of Cranbrook, where he lived for eighteen years. It is likely that he was sensitive of climatal influences, and shy of those breezes that reach this island after passing over the great plains of central Europe: a tenderness, which neither Æthelbald nor Offa can be supposed to have shared with him.