by Daniel Defoe
came to Abbotsbury, a town anciently famous for a great monastery,
and now eminent for nothing but its ruins.
From hence we went on to Bridport, a pretty large corporation town
on the sea-shore, though without a harbour. Here we saw boats all
the way on the shore, fishing for mackerel, which they take in the
easiest manner imaginable; for they fix one end of the net to a
pole set deep into the sand, then, the net being in a boat, they
row right out into the water some length, then turn and row
parallel with the shore, veering out the net all the while, till
they have let go all the net, except the line at the end, and then
the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling the net to the shore
at both ends, bring to shore with it such fish as they surrounded
in the little way they rowed. This, at that time, proved to be an
incredible number, insomuch that the men could hardly draw them on
shore. As soon as the boats had brought their fish on shore we
observed a guard or watch placed on the shore in several places,
who, we found, had their eye, not on the fishermen, but on the
country people who came down to the shore to buy their fish; and
very sharp we found they were, and some that came with small carts
were obliged to go back empty without any fish. When we came to
inquire into the particulars of this, we found that these were
officers placed on the shore by the justices and magistrates of the
towns about, who were ordered to prevent the country farmers buying
the mackerel to dung their land with them, which was thought to be
dangerous as to infection. In short, such was the plenty of fish
that year that the mackerel, the finest and largest I ever saw,
were sold at the seaside a hundred for a penny.
From Bridport (a town in which we see nothing remarkable) we came
to Lyme, the town particularly made famous by the landing of the
Duke of Monmouth and his unfortunate troops in the time of King
James II., of which I need say nothing, the history of it being so
recent in the memory of so many living.
This is a town of good figure, and has in it several eminent
merchants who carry on a considerable trade to France, Spain,
Newfoundland, and the Straits; and though they have neither creek
or bay, road or river, they have a good harbour, but it is such a
one as is not in all Britain besides, if there is such a one in any
part of the world.
It is a massy pile of building, consisting of high and thick walls
of stone, raised at first with all the methods that skill and art
could devise, but maintained now with very little difficulty. The
walls are raised in the main sea at a good distance from the shore;
it consists of one main and solid wall of stone, large enough for
carts and carriages to pass on the top, and to admit houses and
warehouses to be built on it, so that it is broad as a street.
Opposite to this, but farther into the sea, is another wall of the
same workmanship, which crosses the end of the first wall and comes
about with a tail parallel to the first wall.
Between the point of the first or main wall is the entrance into
the port, and the second or opposite wall, breaking the violence of
the sea from the entrance, the ships go into the basin as into a
pier or harbour, and ride there as secure as in a millpond or as in
a wet dock.
The townspeople have the benefit of this wonderful harbour, and it
is carefully kept in repair, as indeed it behoves them to do; but
they could give me nothing of the history of it, nor do they, as I
could perceive, know anything of the original of it, or who built
it. It was lately almost beaten down by a storm, but is repaired
again.
This work is called the Cobb. The Custom House officers have a
lodge and warehouse upon it, and there were several ships of very
good force and rich in value in the basin of it when I was there.
It might be strengthened with a fort, and the walls themselves are
firm enough to carry what guns they please to plant upon it; but
they did not seem to think it needful, and as the shore is
convenient for batteries, they have some guns planted in proper
places, both for the defence of the Cobb and the town also.
This town is under the government of a mayor and aldermen, and may
pass for a place of wealth, considering the bigness of it. Here,
we found, the merchants began to trade in the pilchard-fishing,
though not to so considerable a degree as they do farther west--the
pilchards seldom coming up so high eastward as Portland, and not
very often so high as Lyme.
It was in sight of these hills that Queen Elizabeth's fleet, under
the command of the Lord Howard of Effingham (then Admiral), began
first to engage in a close and resolved fight with the invincible
Spanish Armada in 1588, maintaining the fight, the Spaniards making
eastward till they came the length of Portland Race, where they
gave it over--the Spaniards having received considerable damage,
and keeping then closer together. Off of the same place was a
desperate engagement in the year 1672 between the English and
Dutch, in which the Dutch were worsted and driven over to the coast
of France, and then glad to make home to refit and repair.
While we stayed here some time viewing this town and coast, we had
opportunity to observe the pleasant way of conversation as it is
managed among the gentlemen of this county and their families,
which are, without reflection, some of the most polite and well-
bred people in the isle of Britain. As their hospitality is very
great, and their bounty to the poor remarkable, so their generous
friendly way of living with, visiting, and associating one with
another is as hard to be described as it is really to be admired;
they seem to have a mutual confidence in and friendship with one
another, as if they were all relations; nor did I observe the
sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among the
gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so
much known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet
they sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they
see occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters,
which the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England
are recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are
scandalously said to carry themselves to market, and where every
night they meet at the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and
yet I observed that the women do not seem to stick on hand so much
in this country as in those countries where those assemblies are so
lately set up--the reason of which, I cannot help saying, if my
opinion may bear any weight, is that the Dorsetshire ladies are
equal in beauty, and may be superior in reputation. In a word,
their reputation seems here to be better kept, guarded by better
conduct, and managed with more prudence; and yet
the Dorsetshire
ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about
streets, or hide themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the
whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of
behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I
nowhere see better in all my observation through the whole isle of
Britain. In this little interval also I visited some of the
biggest towns in the north-west part of this county, as Blandford--
a town on the River Stour in the road between Salisbury and
Dorchester--a handsome well-built town, but chiefly famous for
making the finest bone-lace in England, and where they showed me
some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be
had. But it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in
that county, such as no part of England can equal.
From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly called Strabridge.
The town and the country around is employed in the manufacture of
stockings, and which was once famous for making the finest, best,
and highest-prize knit stocking in England; but that trade now is
much decayed by the increase of the knitting-stocking engine or
frame, which has destroyed the hand-knitting trade for fine
stockings through the whole kingdom, of which I shall speak more in
its place.
From hence I came to Sherborne, a large and populous town, with one
collegiate or conventual church, and may properly claim to have
more inhabitants in it than any town in Dorsetshire, though it is
neither the county-town, nor does it send members to Parliament.
The church is still a reverend pile, and shows the face of great
antiquity. Here begins the Wiltshire medley clothing (though this
town be in Dorsetshire), of which I shall speak at large in its
place, and therefore I omit any discourse of it here.
Shaftesbury is also on the edge of this county, adjoining to
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, being fourteen miles from Salisbury,
over that fine down or carpet ground which they call particularly
or properly Salisbury Plain. It has neither house nor town in view
all the way; and the road, which often lies very broad and branches
off insensibly, might easily cause a traveller to lose his way.
But there is a certain never-failing assistance upon all these
downs for telling a stranger his way, and that is the number of
shepherds feeding or keeping their vast flocks of sheep which are
everywhere in the way, and who with a very little pains a traveller
may always speak with. Nothing can be like it. The Arcadians'
plains, of which we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets,
could be nothing to them.
This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a high hill,
which closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presents you a
new scene or prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is
all enclosed, and grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge-
rows; the country rich, fertile, and populous; the towns and houses
standing thick and being large and full of inhabitants, and those
inhabitants fully employed in the richest and most valuable
manufacture in the world--viz., the English clothing, as well the
medley or mixed clothing as whites, as well for the home trade as
the foreign trade, of which I shall take leave to be very
particular in my return through the west and north part of
Wiltshire in the latter part of this work.
In my return to my western progress, I passed some little part of
Somersetshire, as through Evil or Yeovil, upon the River Ivil, in
going to which we go down a long steep hill, which they call
Babylon Hill, but from what original I could find none of the
country people to inform me.
This Yeovil is a market-town of good resort; and some clothing is
carried on in and near it, but not much. Its main manufacture at
this time is making of gloves.
It cannot pass my observation here that when we are come this
length from London the dialect of the English tongue, or the
country way of expressing themselves, is not easily understood--it
is so strangely altered. It is true that it is so in many parts of
England besides, but in none in so gross a degree as in this part.
This way of boorish country speech, as in Ireland it is called the
"brogue" upon the tongue, so here it is called "jouring;" and it is
certain that though the tongue be all mere natural English, yet
those that are but a little acquainted with them cannot understand
one-half of what they say. It is not possible to explain this
fully by writing, because the difference is not so much in the
orthography of words as in the tone and diction--their abridging
the speech, "cham" for "I am," "chil" for "I will," "don" for "put
on," and "doff" for "put off," and the like. And I cannot omit a
short story here on this subject. Coming to a relation's house,
who was a school-master at Martock, in Somersetshire, I went into
his school to beg the boys a play-day, as is usual in such cases (I
should have said, to beg the master a play-day. But that by the
way). Coming into the school, I observed one of the lowest
scholars was reading his lesson to the usher, which lesson, it
seems, was a chapter in the Bible. So I sat down by the master
till the boy had read out his chapter. I observed the boy read a
little oddly in the tone of the country, which made me the more
attentive, because on inquiry I found that the words were the same
and the orthography the same as in all our Bibles. I observed also
the boy read it out with his eyes still on the book and his head
(like a mere boy) moving from side to side as the lines reached
cross the columns of the book. His lesson was in the Canticles, v.
3 of chap. v. The words these:- "I have put off my coat. How
shall I put it on? I have washed my feet. How shall I defile
them?"
The boy read thus, with his eyes, as I say, full on the text:-
"Chav a doffed my cooat. How shall I don't? Chav a washed my
veet. How shall I moil 'em?"
How the dexterous dunce could form his month to express so readily
the words (which stood right printed in the book) in his country
jargon, I could not but admire. I shall add to this another piece
as diverting, which also happened in my knowledge at this very town
of Yeovil, though some years ago.
There lived a good substantial family in the town not far from the
"Angel Inn"--a well-known house, which was then, and, I suppose, is
still, the chief inn of the town. This family had a dog which,
among his other good qualities for which they kept him (for he was
a rare house-dog), had this bad one--that he was a most notorious
thief, but withal so cunning a dog, and managed himself so warily,
that he preserved a mighty good reputation am
ong the neighbourhood.
As the family was well beloved in the town, so was the dog. He was
known to be a very useful servant to them, especially in the night
(when he was fierce as a lion; but in the day the gentlest,
lovingest creature that could be), and, as they said, all the
neighbours had a good word for this dog.
It happened that the good wife or mistress at the "Angel Inn" had
frequently missed several pieces of meat out of the pail, as they
say--or powdering-tub, as we call it--and that some were very large
pieces. It is also to be observed the dog did not stay to eat what
he took upon the spot, in which case some pieces or bones or
fragments might be left, and so it might be discovered to be a dog;
but he made cleaner work, and when he fastened upon a piece of meat
he was sure to carry it quite away to such retreats as he knew he
could be safe in, and so feast upon it at leisure.
It happened at last, as with most thieves it does, that the inn-
keeper was too cunning for him, and the poor dog was nabbed, taken
in the fact, and could make no defence.
Having found the thief and got him in custody, the master of the
house, a good-humoured fellow, and loth to disoblige the dog's
master by executing the criminal, as the dog law directs, mitigates
his sentence, and handled him as follows:- First, taking out his
knife, he cut off both his ears; and then, bringing him to the
threshold, he chopped off his tail. And having thus effectually
dishonoured the poor cur among his neighbours, he tied a string
about his neck, and a piece of paper to the string, directed to his
master, and with these witty West Country verses on it:-
"To my honoured master,--Esq.
"Hail master a cham a' com hoam,
So cut as an ape, and tail have I noan,
For stealing of beef and pork out of the pail,
For thease they'v cut my ears, for th' wother my tail;
Nea measter, and us tell thee more nor that
And's come there again, my brains will be flat."
I could give many more accounts of the different dialects of the
people of this country, in some of which they are really not to be
understood; but the particulars have little or no diversion in
them. They carry it such a length that we see their "jouring"
speech even upon their monuments and grave-stones; as, for example,
even in some of the churchyards of the city of Bristol I saw this
excellent poetry after some other lines:-
"And when that thou doest hear of thick,
Think of the glass that runneth quick."
But I proceed into Devonshire. From Yeovil we came to Crookorn,
thence to Chard, and from thence into the same road I was in before
at Honiton.
This is a large and beautiful market-town, very populous and well
built, and is so very remarkably paved with small pebbles that on
either side the way a little channel is left shouldered up on the
sides of it, so that it holds a small stream of fine clear running
water, with a little square dipping-place left at every door; so
that every family in the town has a clear, clean running river (as
it may be called) just at their own door, and this so much finer,
so much pleasanter, and agreeable to look on than that at Salisbury
(which they boast so much of), that, in my opinion, there is no
comparison.
Here we see the first of the great serge manufacture of Devonshire-
-a trade too great to be described in miniature, as it must be if I
undertake it here, and which takes up this whole county, which is
the largest and most populous in England, Yorkshire excepted (which
ought to be esteemed three counties, and is, indeed, divided as
such into the East, West, and North Riding). But Devonshire, one
entire county, is so full of great towns, and those towns so full
of people, and those people so universally employed in trade and
manufactures, that not only it cannot be equalled in England, but
perhaps not in Europe.
In my travel through Dorsetshire I ought to have observed that the
