A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain III

A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain III
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Daniel Defoe brings a lifetime’s experience to the tradition of travel writing as a businessman, soldier, economic journalist and spy, and his Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain is an invaluable source of social and economic history. This book is not only a beautifully written guide to Britain just before the industrial revolution. It is his deeply imaginative response to a brave new economic world.

Daniel Defoe

A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain III

© T8RUGRAM, 2018

© Original, 2018

The Author’s Preface to the Third Volume

The tour is now finish’d; and you have the account contracted into as narrow a compass, as, considering the extent of ground pass’d over, with the number of cities, populous towns, and a country infinitely rich, populous and prosperous, to be described, could be reasonably expected.

As I mentioned in the last volume, every new view of Great Britain would require a new description; the improvements that encrease, the new buildings erected, the old buildings taken down: New discoveries in metals, mines, minerals; new undertakings in trade; inventions, engines, manufactures, in a nation, pushing and improving as we are: These things open new scenes every day, and make England especially shew a new and differing face in many places, on every occasion of surveying it.

Since our last volume, we have to add to the description of the parts in and about London, a large variety both of publick and private buildings; as a new East-India House building in the city, and a South-Sea Company-House finished, both lofty and magnificent. Mr. Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, the noblest foundation of the age for one private charity, finished and filled at the foot of above an hundred thousand pounds gift, if common fame may be believed: The additions to Bethlehem Hospital, and several new steeples and churches; Sir Gregory Page’s house, or rather palace, upon Black-Heath, erected and finished, one of the most beautiful seats belonging to a private gentleman, that not England only, but that all Europe can produce.

Add to this the cookery, as they properly enough call it, of the South-Sea Company for their Greenland trade, their whale-fishing, and boiling their blubber, &c. being the largest magazine of all sorts of materials for the shipping, fishing, &c. that is belonging to any private branch of commerce. Then there is a little city of buildings, streets and squares, added to those mentioned before, at the west end of Hanover and Cavendish Square, with the repair of two terrible fires at Wapping and Ratcliff.

And, to close all: There is the erecting a new stone bridge over the Thames at Putney and Fulham, for which an Act of Parliament was obtained last sessions, and preparations are now actually making to set about it, which is like to be a very stately and magnificent work.

If all these additions are to be found in the small interval between the publishing the second volume and this of the third, and that in so narrow a compass, what may not every subsequent year produce? and what encouragement is here for new and more accurate surveys of this country? which, whoever travels over it, will always furnish new materials, and a variety both profitable and delightful.

The fine house built by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, in the north part of the county of Norfolk, is, as I am told, now also finished, at least the outside work and figure of the building is; so it is a mistake that must be acknowledged in form, (however not the author’s) when, in our last, the inscription fixed on the foundation-stone of the building, was said to be ordered for the frize; the necessary absence of the author, (who was then on a journey for preparing this volume) may answer for a fault owing to the corrector of the press, and which, had the author seen it, could not have pass’d his notice. But the triumph one impertinent has made upon the occasion, is fully check’d by this more than needful concession. It is a happy testimony of the care and caution used by the author of this work, in every part of it, when such earnest endeavours are used to expose it, and so little found, to lay hold of. Any mistake that can be found, and, in a friendly manner, hinted, we shall receive with thankfulness, and amend chearfully; But a cavil, evidently malicious, of an author without a name, lest an answer should be given, will be treated as it deserves, with the contempt of silence.

Introduction to the Third Volume

Sir – I have now finished my account of the several circuits which I took the last year, compleating the southern parts of the isle of Britain; my last brought me to the banks of the River Trent, and from thence back to London, where I first set out.

I have yet the largest, tho’ not the most populous, part of Britain to give you an account of; nor is it less capable of satisfying the most curious traveller: Though, as in some places things may stand more remote from one another, and there may, perhaps, be more waste ground to go over; yet ’tis certain a traveller spends no waste hours, if his genius will be satisfied with just observations. The wildest part of the country is full of variety, the most mountainous places have their rarities to oblige the curious, and give constant employ to the enquiries of a diligent observer, making the passing over them more pleasant than the traveller cou’d expect, or than the reader perhaps at first sight will think possible.

The people in these northern climes will encrease the variety; their customs and genius differing so much from others, will add to our entertainment; the one part of them being, till now, a distinct nation, the inhabitants thereof will necessarily come in as a part of what we are to describe: Scotland is neither so considerable, that we should compliment her at the expence of England; or so inconsiderable, that we should think it below us to do her justice; I shall take the middle of both extremes.

I shall be tempted very often to make excursions here on account of the history and antiquities of persons and places both private and publick. For the northern parts of Britain, especially of England, as they were long the seat of war between the several nations; such as the Britains, Scots, Picts, Romans, Saxons, and Danes, so there are innumerable remains of antiquity left behind them, and those more visible in those parts, and less defac’d by time, and other accidents than in any other part of the island.

He that travels through such a country, if he sees and knows the meaning of those monuments of antiquity, and has due memoirs of the historical part still in his head, must be inexcusable if he takes up his own time, or his reader’s pateince, in observing trifles, and recording things of no signification.

I knew two gentlemen who travelled over the greatest part of England in several journies together; the result of their observations were very different indeed; one of them took some minutes of things for his own satisfaction, but not much; but the other, as he said, took an exact Journal; the case was thus:

He that took minutes only, those minutes were very critical, and upon some very significant things; but for the rest his memory was so good, and he took so good notice of every thing worth observing, that he wrote a very good and useful account of his whole journey after his return; that account I have seen, and had the advantage to look it over again upon this occasion, and by it to correct and enlarge some of my own observations; it being as impossible any one man could see or observe every thing worth seeing in England, as it is to know every face he meets in a croud.

The other gentleman’s papers, which I called an exact Journal, contained the following very significant heads:

I. The day of the month when he set out.

II. The names of the towns where they din’d every day, and where they lodg’d at night.

III. The signs of the inns where they din’d and lodg’d, with the memorandums of which had good claret, which not.

IV. The day of the month when he return’d.

The moral of this brief story, which I insist that I know to be true, is very much to my purpose. The difference between these two gentlemen in their travelling, and in their remarks upon their journey, is a good emblem of the differing genius in readers. as well as authors, and may be a guide to both in the work now before us.

I have endeavoured that these letters shall not be a journal of trifles; if it is on that account too grave for some people, I hope it will not for others; I have study’d the advancement and encrease of knowledge for those that read, and shall be as glad to make them wise, as to make them merry; yet I hope they will not find the story so ill told, or so dull as to tyre them too soon, or so barren as to put them to sleep over it.

The north part of Great Britain, I mean Scotland, is a country which will afford a great variety to the observation, and to the pen of an itinerate; a kingdom so famous in the world for great and gallant men, as well states-men as soldiers, but especially the last, can never leave us barren of subject, or empty of somewhat to say of her.

The Union has seemed to secure her peace, and to encrease her commerce: But I cannot say she has raised her figure in the world at all since that time, I mean as a body; She was before considered as a nation, now she appears no more but as a province, or at best a dominion; she has not lost her name as a place; but as a state, she may be said to have lost it, and that she is now no more than a part of Great Britain in common with other parts of it, of which England it self is also no more. I might enlarge here upon the honour it is to Scotland to be a part of the British Empire, and to be incorporated with so powerful a people under the crown of so great a monarch; their being united in name as one, Britain, and their enjoying all the privileges of, and in common with, a nation who have the greatest privileges, and enjoy the most liberty of any people in the world. But I should be told, and perhaps justly too, that this was talking like an Englishman, rather than like a Briton; that I was gone from my declared impartiality, and that the Scots would perhaps talk a different stile when I came among them. Nor is it my business to enquire which nation have the better end of the staff in the late coalition, or how the articles on which it is established, are performed on one side or other.

My business is rather to give a true and impartial description of the place; a view of the country, its present state as to fertility, commerce, manufacture, and product; with the manners and usages of the people, as I have done in England; and to this I shall confine my self as strictly as the nature of a journey thro’ the country requires.

I shall, in doing this, come indeed of course to make frequent mention of the various turns and revolutions which have happened in those northern parts; for Scotland has changed its masters, and its forms of government, as often as other nations; and, in doing this, it will necessarily occur to speak of the Union, which is the last, and like to be the last revolution of affairs in Scotland for, we hope, many ages. But I shall enter no farther into this, than is concerned in the difference between the face of things there now, and what was there before the said Union, and which the Union has been the occasion or cause of; as particularly the division and government of the countries, and towns, and people in particular places; the communication of privileges, influence of government, and enlarging of the liberty of trade.

This will also bring on the needful account of alterations and improvements, in those counties, which, by reason of the long and cruel wars between the two nations in former reigns, lay waste and unimproved, thinly inhabited, and the people not only poor because of the continual incursions of the troops on either side; but barbarous and ravenous themselves, as being inured to rapine, and living upon the spoil of one another for several ages; all which is now at an end, and those counties called the marches or borders, are now as well peopled and cultivated as other counties, or in a fair way to be so.

This alteration affords abundance of useful observations, and ’tis hop’d they shall be fruitfully improved in this work; and as it is a subject which none have yet meddled with, so we believe it will not be the less acceptable for its novelty, if tolerably well handled, as we hope it shall be.

Those few cavils which have been raised at the former parts of this work; for it is with great satisfaction I can say they are but few, are far from discouraging me in this hardest and most difficult part of the undertaking; I believe it is impossible for any man to observe so narrowly upon Great Britain, as to omit nothing, or to mistake in nothing; the great Mr. Cambden has committed many mistakes, which his reverend continuator has corrected; and there are yet many more which that learned and reverend author has not seen; and both together have omitted many things very well worth observing; yet their works are justly valued, their labours and endeavours commendable and profitable to the world; and no man lessens the author for not seeing every thing, or knowing critically every thing, tho’ worth knowing, which persons inhabiting those places may be respectively informed of.

If our endeavour has been, as it really has, to give a full and just representation of persons and things wherever we came, I think the end is as fully pursued as any author can undertake to do; and for cavils and querulous criticisms, or for unavoidable omitting of what did not occur to observation, they are not worth notice; what real mistakes we have yet discovered in the last volume, are touch’d at in the Preface; and if we had met with more, they should have been mentioned faithfully; for no wise man will be ashamed to amend a mistake; but ’tis a satisfaction enough to tempt one’s vanity to be able to say how few they are.

Letter VIII

The Trent Valley

Sir – As I am to begin this circuit from the River Trent, and to confine my observations to that part of Britain which the Scots and Northumberlanders, and others on that side, call North by Trent, it seems necessary (at least it cannot be improper) to give some description of the river it self, and especially the course which it runs, by which, adding a little river call’d the Weaver, and a branch of it call’d the Dane in Staffordshire and Cheshire, the whole island of Britain is, as it were, divided into two parts.

The River Trent is rated by ancient writers as the third river in England, the two greater being the Thames and the Severn: It is also one of the six principal rivers which running across the island from the west to the east, all begin with the letter T; namely, the Thames, Trent, Tees, Tine, Tweed, and Tay.

The Trent is not the largest river of the six; yet it may be said to run the longest course of any of them, and rises nearer to the west verge of the island than any of the other; also it is the largest, and of the longest course of any river in England, which does not empty its waters immediately into the sea; for the Trent runs into the Humber, and so its waters lose their name before they reach to the ocean.

It rises in the hills or highlands of Staffordshire, called the Moorlands, receiving, from the edge of Cheshire, and towards Lancashire, a great many (some say thirty, and that thence it had its name) little rivulets into it, very near its head, all which may claim a share in being the originals of the Trent; thus it soon becomes one large river, and comes down from the hills with a violent current into the flat country; where, being encreased by several other little rivers, it carries a deeper channel, and a stiller current; and having given its name to Trentham, a small market town in the same county, it goes on to Stone, a considerable town on the great road to West-Chester.

The original of its name is very uncertain, as is the case in most other rivers of England; that it takes the name of Trent, as above, because of its receiving thirty rivers into it, or because there are thirty several sorts of fish in it, or that, like the Tibiscus in Hungary, it is three parts water, and two parts fish; all these the learned and judicious Mr. Cambden rejects, as I do for the same reason, namely, because they have no authority for the suggestion.

One branch of the Trent rises within a quarter of a mile of the Dane, (viz.) from a moor adjoining to, or part of a little ridge of hills called Molecop Hill, near Congleton, and is within twenty two miles of the Irish Sea, or that arm or inlet of the sea which the Mersee makes from Frodsham to Liverpool and Hyle-lake; and as the Dane runs into the Weaver, and both into that arm of the sea, and the Trent into the Humber, which opens into the great German Ocean, those rivers may be said to cut the island across in the middle.

It is true, the northern part is much larger than the southern, now Scotland is united; otherwise the country south by Trent, including Wales, is by far the largest: But it must be allowed still, that the country south by Trent is the richest by far, and most populous; occasioned chiefly by the city of London, and the commerce of the Thames; as for the cities of Bristol, Exceter, and Norwich, which are large and very populous, and in some things drive a prodigious trade, as well in merchandise as manufacture, we shall find them matched, if not out-done, by the growing towns of Liverpool, Hull, Leeds, Newcastle, and Manchester, and the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, as shall be shown in its place.

The Trent runs a course of near two hundred miles, through the four counties of Stafford, Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln; it receives, besides lesser waters, the larger rivers of the Sowe from the west side of the county, and from the town of Stafford; the Tame from Birmingham and Tamworth; the Soar from Leicester; and the Dove and Derwent, two furiously rapid streams, from the Peak of Derby; the Idle, a gentle navigable stream from Rhetford and Nottinghamshire; with part of the Wittham, called the Fossdike from Lincoln, also navigable; and the greatest of them all, the Don, from Doncaster, Rothram, and Sheffield, after a long and rapid course through the moors called Stanecross on the edge of Derby, and the West-Riding of Yorkshire.

The Trent is navigable by ships of good burthen as high as Gainsbrough, which is near 40 miles from the Humber by the river. The barges without the help of locks or stops go as high as Nottingham, and farther by the help of art, to Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. The stream is full, the channel deep and safe, and the tide flows up a great way between Gainsborough and Newark. This, and the navigation lately, reaching up to Burton and up the Derwent to Derby, is a great support to, and encrease of the trade of those counties which border upon it; especially for the cheese trade from Cheshire and Warwickshire, which have otherwise no navigation but about from West Chester to London; whereas by this river it is brought by water to Hull, and from thence to all the south and north coasts on the east side of Britain; ’tis calculated that there is about four thousand ton of Cheshire cheese only, brought down the Trent every year from those parts of England to Gainsborough and Hull; and especially in time of the late war, when the seas on the other side of England were too dangerous to bring it by long-sea.

Thus much for the River Trent; The towns standing upon it, and especially on the north shore or bank are but few, at least of note: Beginning at the mouth of it, and going up the stream, all the towns, such as Burton, Stockwith, Gainsborough, and Newark, are on the south bank, and consequently have been spoken to already. The only towns of any note that are to be found on the north bank of Trent, are Nottingham, and the other Burton, of which I shall speak in their order; at present, as I took a different circuit in my riding, I must do so in my account of it also, or else if my pen does not follow my foot, I shall wander rather than travel, at least in my paper, whatever I did on my horse.

The counties north by Trent are few; but most of them large; I mean on the side of England, (viz.) York, which I shall call three counties, as it is divided into three Ridings, and are large counties too; and Lancashire, which is very large, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, which are the most southerly, are but small; I shall begin there, and take them together.