by Daniel Defoe
and Martyr, who fell by the Hands of the Pagan Danes in the Year of
our Lord 872, the 23rd of April."
Here are also the monuments of the great Marchioness of Exeter,
mother of Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, and last of the
family of Courtneys who enjoyed that honour; as also of John de
Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife, grandmother of King Henry
VII., by her daughter Margaret, Countess of Richmond.
This last lady I mention because she was foundress of a very fine
free school, which has since been enlarged and had a new
benefactress in Queen Elizabeth, who has enlarged the stipend and
annexed it to the foundation. The famous Cardinal Pole was Dean of
this church before his exaltation.
Having said this of the church, I have said all that is worth
naming of the town; except that the inhabitants, who are many and
poor, are chiefly maintained by the manufacture of knitting
stockings, which employs great part indeed of the county of Dorset,
of which this is the first town eastward.
South of this town, over a sandy, wild, and barren country, we came
to Poole, a considerable seaport, and indeed the most considerable
in all this part of England; for here I found some ships, some
merchants, and some trade; especially, here were a good number of
ships fitted out every year to the Newfoundland fishing, in which
the Poole men were said to have been particularly successful for
many years past.
The town sits in the bottom of a great bay or inlet of the sea,
which, entering at one narrow mouth, opens to a very great breadth
within the entrance, and comes up to the very shore of this town;
it runs also west up almost to the town of Wareham, a little below
which it receives the rivers Frome and Piddle, the two principal
rivers of the county.
This place is famous for the best and biggest oysters in all this
part of England, which the people of Poole pretend to be famous for
pickling; and they are barrelled up here, and sent not only to
London, but to the West Indies, and to Spain and Italy, and other
parts. It is observed more pearls are found in the Poole oysters,
and larger, than in any other oysters about England.
As the entrance into this large bay is narrow, so it is made
narrower by an island, called Branksey, which, lying the very month
of the passage, divides it into two, and where there is an old
castle, called Branksey Castle, built to defend the entrance, and
this strength was very great advantage to the trade of this port in
the time of the late war with France.
Wareham is a neat town and full of people, having a share of trade
with Poole itself; it shows the ruins of a large town, and, it is
apparent, has had eight churches, of which they have three
remaining.
South of Wareham, and between the bay I have mentioned and the sea,
lies a large tract of land which, being surrounded by the sea
except on one side, is called an island, though it is really what
should be called a peninsula. This tract of land is better
inhabited than the sea-coast of this west end of Dorsetshire
generally is, and the manufacture of stockings is carried on there
also; it is called the Isle of Purbeck, and has in the middle of it
a large market-town, called Corfe, and from the famous castle there
the whole town is now called Corfe Castle; it is a corporation,
sending members to Parliament.
This part of the country is eminent for vast quarries of stone,
which is cut out flat, and used in London in great quantities for
paving courtyards, alleys, avenues to houses, kitchens, footways on
the sides of the High Streets, and the like; and is very profitable
to the place, as also in the number of shipping employed in
bringing it to London. There are also several rocks of very good
marble, only that the veins in the stone are not black and white,
as the Italian, but grey, red, and other colours.
From hence to Weymouth, which is 22 miles, we rode in view of the
sea; the country is open, and in some respects pleasant, but not
like the northern parts of the county, which are all fine carpet-
ground, soft as velvet, and the herbage sweet as garden herbs,
which makes their sheep be the best in England, if not in the
world, and their wool fine to an extreme.
I cannot omit here a small adventure which was very surprising to
me on this journey; passing this plain country, we came to an open
piece of ground where a neighbouring gentleman had at a great
expense laid out a proper piece of land for a decoy, or duck-coy,
as some call it. The works were but newly done, the planting
young, the ponds very large and well made; but the proper places
for shelter of the fowl not covered, the trees not being grown, and
men were still at work improving and enlarging and planting on the
adjoining heath or common. Near the decoy-keeper's house were some
places where young decoy ducks were hatched, or otherwise kept to
fit them for their work. To preserve them from vermin (polecats,
kites, and such like), they had set traps, as is usual in such
cases, and a gibbet by it, where abundance of such creatures as
were taken were hanged up for show.
While the decoy-man was busy showing the new works, he was alarmed
with a great cry about this house for "Help! help!" and away he
ran like the wind, guessing, as we supposed, that something was
catched in the trap.
It was a good big boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old, that
cried out, for coming to the place he found a great fowl caught by
the leg in the trap, which yet was so strong and so outrageous that
the boy going too near him, he flew at him and frighted him, bit
him, and beat him with his wings, for he was too strong for the
boy; as the master ran from the decoy, so another manservant ran
from the house, and finding a strange creature fast in the trap,
not knowing what it was, laid at him with a great stick. The
creature fought him a good while, but at length he struck him an
unlucky blow which quieted him; after this we all came up to see
what the matter, and found a monstrous eagle caught by the leg in
the trap, and killed by the fellow's cudgel, as above.
When the master came to know what it was, and that his man had
killed it, he was ready to kill the fellow for his pains, for it
was a noble creature indeed, and would have been worth a great deal
to the man to have it shown about the country, or to have sold to
any gentleman curious in such things; but the eagle was dead, and
there we left it. It is probable this eagle had flown over the sea
from France, either there or at the Isle of Wight, where the
channel is not so wide; for we do not find that any eagles are
known to breed in those parts of Britain.
From hence we turned up to Dorchester, the county town, though not
the largest town in the county. Dorchester is indeed a pleasant
agreeable town to live in, and where I thought the people seemed
less divided into factions and p
arties than in other places; for
though here are divisions, and the people are not all of one mind,
either as to religion or politics, yet they did not seem to
separate with so much animosity as in other places. Here I saw the
Church of England clergyman, and the Dissenting minister or
preacher drinking tea together, and conversing with civility and
good neighbourhood, like Catholic Christians and men of a Catholic
and extensive charity. The town is populous, though not large; the
streets broad, but the buildings old and low. However, there is
good company, and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a
retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time and as well
in Dorchester as in any town I know in England.
The downs round this town are exceeding pleasant, and come up on,
every side, even to the very streets' end; and here it was that
they told me that there were six hundred thousand sheep fed on the
downs within six miles of the town--that is, six miles every way,
which is twelve miles in diameter, and thirty-six miles in
circumference. This, I say, I was told--I do not affirm it to be
true; but when I viewed the country round, I confess I could not
but incline to believe it.
It is observable of these sheep that they are exceeding fruitful,
the ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they are for that reason
bought by all the farmers through the east part of England, who
come to Burford Fair in this country to buy them, and carry them
into Kent and Surrey eastward, and into Buckinghamshire and
Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire north; even our Banstead Downs in
Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is supplied from this place. The
grass or herbage of these downs is full of the sweetest and the
most aromatic plants, such as nourish the sheep to a strange
degree; and the sheep's dung, again, nourishes that herbage to a
strange degree; so that the valleys are rendered extremely fruitful
by the washing of the water in hasty showers from off these hills.
An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire, the
next county to this; for it is the same thing in proportion over
this whole county. I was told that at this town there was a meadow
on the bank of the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury,
which was let for 12 pounds a year per acre for the grass only.
This I inquired particularly after at the place, and was assured by
the inhabitants, as one man, that the fact was true, and was showed
the meadows. The grass which grew on them was such as grew to the
length of ten or twelve feet, rising up to a good height and then
taking root again, and was of so rich a nature as to answer very
well such an extravagant rent.
The reason they gave for this was the extraordinary richness of the
soil, made so, as above, by the falling or washing of the rains
from the hills adjacent, by which, though no other land thereabouts
had such a kind of grass, yet all other meadows and low grounds of
the valley were extremely rich in proportion.
There are abundance of good families, and of very ancient lines in
the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the
Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells, Sydenhams, and
many others, some of which have very great estates in the county,
and in particular Colonel Strangeways, Napier, and Courtney. The
first of these is master of the famous swannery or nursery of
swans, the like of which, I believe, is not in Europe. I wonder
any man should pretend to travel over this country, and pass by it,
too, and then write his account and take no notice of it.
From Dorchester it is six miles to the seaside south, and the ocean
in view almost all the way. The first town you come to is
Weymouth, or Weymouth and Melcombe, two towns lying at the mouth of
a little rivulet which they call the Wey, but scarce claims the
name of a river. However, the entrance makes a very good though
small harbour, and they are joined by a wooden bridge; so that
nothing but the harbour parts them; yet they are separate
corporations, and choose each of them two members of Parliament,
just as London and Southwark.
Weymouth is a sweet, clean, agreeable town, considering its low
situation, and close to the sea; it is well built, and has a great
many good substantial merchants in it who drive a considerable
trade, and have a good number of ships belonging to the town. They
carry on now, in time of peace, a trade with France; but, besides
this, they trade also to Portugal, Spain, Newfoundland, and
Virginia; and they have a large correspondence also up in the
country for the consumption of their returns; especially the wine
trade and the Newfoundland trade are considerable here.
Without the harbour is an old castle, called Sandfoot Castle; and
over against them, where there is a good road for ships to put in
on occasions of bad weather, is Portland Castle, and the road is
called Portland Road. While I was here once, there came a
merchant-ship into that road called Portland Road under a very hard
storm of wind; she was homeward bound from Oporto for London, laden
with wines; and as she came in she made signals of distress to the
town, firing guns for help, and the like, as is usual in such
cases; it was in the dark of the night that the ship came in, and,
by the help of her own pilot, found her way into the road, where
she came to an anchor, but, as I say, fired guns for help.
The venturous Weymouth men went off, even before it was light, with
two boats to see who she was, and what condition she was in; and
found she was come to an anchor, and had struck her topmasts; but
that she had been in bad weather, had lost an anchor and cable
before, and had but one cable to trust to, which did hold her, but
was weak; and as the storm continued to blow, they expected every
hour to go on shore and split to pieces.
Upon this the Weymouth boats came back with such diligence that in
less than three hours they were on board them again with an anchor
and cable, which they immediately bent in its place, and let go to
assist the other, and thereby secured the ship. It is true that
they took a good price of the master for the help they gave him;
for they made him draw a bill on his owners at London for 12 pounds
for the use of the anchor, cable, and boat, besides some gratuities
to the men. But they saved the ship and cargo by it, and in three
or four days the weather was calm, and he proceeded on his voyage,
returning the anchor and cable again; so that, upon the whole, it
was not so extravagant as at first I thought it to be.
The Isle of Portland, on which the castle I mentioned stands, lies
right against this Port of Weymouth. Hence it is that our best and
whitest freestone comes, with which the Cathedral of St. Paul's,
the Monument, and all the public edifices in the City of London are
chiefly built; and it is wonderful, and well worth the observation
of a traveller, to see the quar
ries in the rocks from whence they
are cut out, what stones, and of what prodigious a size are cut out
there.
The island is indeed little more than one continued rock of
freestone, and the height of the land is such that from this island
they see in clear weather above half over the Channel to France,
though the Channel here is very broad. The sea off of this island,
and especially to the west of it, is counted the most dangerous
part of the British Channel. Due south, there is almost a
continued disturbance in the waters, by reason of what they call
two tides meeting, which I take to be no more than the sets of the
currents from the French coast and from the English shore meeting:
this they call Portland Race; and several ships, not aware of these
currents, have been embayed to the west of Portland, and been
driven on shore on the beach (of which I shall speak presently),
and there lost.
To prevent this danger, and guide the mariner in these distresses,
they have within these few months set up two lighthouses on the two
points of that island; and they had not been many months set up,
with the directions given to the public for their bearings, but we
found three outward-bound East India ships which were in distress
in the night, in a hard extreme gale of wind, were so directed by
those lights that they avoided going on shore by it, which, if the
lights had not been there, would inevitably happened to their
destruction.
This island, though seemingly miserable, and thinly inhabited, yet
the inhabitants being almost all stone-cutters, we found there were
no very poor people among them, and when they collected money for
the re-building St. Paul's, they got more in this island than in
the great town of Dorchester, as we were told.
Though Portland stands a league off from the mainland of Britain,
yet it is almost joined by a prodigious riff of beach--that is to
say, of small stones cast up by the sea--which runs from the island
so near the shore of England that they ferry over with a boat and a
rope, the water not being above half a stone's-throw over; and the
said riff of beach ending, as it were, at that inlet of water,
turns away west, and runs parallel with the shore quite to
Abbotsbury, which is a town about seven miles beyond Weymouth.
I name this for two reasons: first, to explain again what I said
before of ships being embayed and lost here. This is when ships
coming from the westward omit to keep a good offing, or are taken
short by contrary winds, and cannot weather the high land of
Portland, but are driven between Portland and the mainland. If
they can come to an anchor, and ride it out, well and good; and if
not, they run on shore on that vast beach and are lost without
remedy.
On the inside of this beach, and between it and the land, there is,
as I have said, an inlet of water which they ferry over, as above,
to pass and re-pass to and from Portland: this inlet opens at
about two miles west, and grows very broad, and makes a kind of
lake within the land of a mile and a half broad, and near three
miles in length, the breadth unequal. At the farthest end west of
this water is a large duck-coy, and the verge of the water well
grown with wood, and proper groves of trees for cover for the fowl:
in the open lake, or broad part, is a continual assembly of swans:
here they live, feed, and breed, and the number of them is such
that, I believe, I did not see so few as 7,000 or 8,000. Here they
are protected, and here they breed in abundance. We saw several of
them upon the wing, very high in the air, whence we supposed that
they flew over the riff of beach, which parts the lake from the
sea, to feed on the shores as they thought fit, and so came home
again at their leisure.
From this duck-coy west, the lake narrows, and at last almost
closes, till the beach joins the shore; and so Portland may be
said, not to be an island, but part of the continent. And now we
