the south side of Cheshire by the River Wever Trees are oftentimes found by digging under ground which people think have lien buried there ever since Noah's Flood Nantwich Northwich and Middlewich are the famous Salt pits of this Shire being 5. or 6. miles asunder The whitest Salt is made at Nantwich which saith Cambden hath but one Pit about some 14. foot from the River out of which they conveigh Salt-Water by troughs of Wood into the Houses adjoining where there stand little Barrels pitched fast in the ground which they fill with the Water and then make fire under the Leads whereof they have six in a house and in them they seeth the Water Then with little wooden rakes they fetch up the Salt from the botom and put it in baskets out of which the Liquor runs and the pure salt remains The Salt pit at Northwich is very near the brink of the River Dan being a very deep and plentiful pit Quaere whether the Rivers Wever and Dan be themselves salt at these two places The two salt Wells at Middlewich are parted one from the other by a small brook of fresh Water It is reported that there are Trees that flote in Bagmere a Mere so called near the seat of the Family of the Breretons against the death of any of the heirs of the Breretons and after the heir is dead they sink and are never seen more till the next occasion Cambden saith that this story is verified upon the credit of many credible persons and that these bodies of trees swim for certain dayes together and may be seen of any body And he seconds it with another story to this purpose Leonardus Vairus saith he reports from the testimony of Cardinal Gravel that near the Abbey of St. Maurice in Burgundy is a Fish-pond into which are fishes put according to the number of the Monks of that place and if any one of them happen to be sick there is a fish seen also to flote and swim above the water half dead And if the Monk shall dye the said fish will dye too some few days before him Thus Cambden who gives so much credit to these stories that he thinks they are the Works of Angels But so doth not Speed who thinks it to be but a conceit and a fable as he doth also the prophesie of Leyland concerning Beeston Castle mounted upon a steep hill The Castle being ruinated Leyland prophesied of it in his time thus that it should be reedified The day shall come when it again shall mount his head aloft If I a Prophet may be heard from Seers that say so oft Whether Leylands Prophesie have proved true since I know not but so much is true that in the late Wars Beeston Castle was a Garrison Prophets generally are very compassionate to the rubbish of stately Piles and the Elegies they commonly sing at their fall are Prophesies of their re-edifying because they see men generally willing to believe what they would have though improbable nay though impossible And this I think was the true original of that late Prophesie among the Welch that Ragland Castle shal be built again I will not undertake to tell you the cause of the floting of those Trees in Bagmere because there are several circumstances that render it very dark Onely observe that in this shire as is said bodies of Trees are often times digged out of the ground July the 8th being Wednesday 1657. about three of the clock in the parish of Bickley was heard a very great noise like Thunder afar off which was much wondred at because the skye was clear and no appearance of a Cloud Shortly after saith the Author of this relation a neighbour comes to me and told me I should see a very strange thing if I would go with him So coming into a field called the Layfeild we found a very great bank of earth which had many tall Oakes growing on it quite sunk under the ground Trees and all At first we durst not go near it because the earth for near twenty yards round about is exceeding much rent and seems ready to fall in but sinee that time my self and some others by Ropes have ventured to see the bottom I mean to go to the brink so as to discern the visible bottom which is Water and conceived to be about 30. yards from us under which is sunk all the earth about it for sixteen yards round at least three tall Oaks a very tall Awber and certain other small Trees and not a sprig of them to be seen above water Four or five Oaks more are expected to fall every moment and a great quantity of Land is like to fall indeed never ceasing more or less and when any considerable clod falls it is much like the report of a Canon We can discern the ground hollow above the Water a very great depth but how far hollow or how deep is not to be found out by man Of this we have said somewhat in Kent Some of the water as I have been told was drawn out of this pit with a bucket and they found it to be as salt as sea-sea-water whence some imagine that there are certain large passages there into which the sea flows under ground but I rather think that this salt water is no more but that which issues from those salt springs about Nantwitch and other places in this shire Query whether those Trees that are before said to be digged up in some places hereabout were not buried in the earth by some such sinking as this I am told that about Bickley the soil is a very soul miry clay that there is hardly any travelling that way in the winter time If so I conceive then that under this upper Clay lyes a mouldring washy Clay or Sand which is carried away by degrees by the course of Springs as we said before of Motingham and that this July being the dryest part of Summer and this Summer 1657. being an extream hot and dry Summer the hottest and dryest I ever knew this Clayie ground did chap as it is the nature of Clay to do in dry hot weather especially the most rotten and miry Clay as we see in Marshes and divide it self from the rest of the ground near it to which and to its fall the hollowness underueath and the weight of the tall Oaks above did much contribute Herefordshire THE air is very wholsome and the soil of this shire exceeding rich for Corn. About Lemster is the finest Wool of England though it be not so fine as that of Aquila and Tarentum in Italy It is likewise famous for the purest Wheat as Weabley is for the best Ale By Snodhill Castle is a quarry of excellent Marble Not far from Richards Castle is a Well called Bone-well wherein are continually found little Fishes bones yet Cambden thinks they may be Frogs bones but there is not a Fin to be seen and being wholly cleansed thereof wil yet have the like
this shire as well as in Anglesey Towards Dee an arm of the Sea the fields bear in some places Barley in others Wheat but generally throughout Rye with twenty fold increase and better especially every first year that they be new broken up and sowen and afterwardsfour or five crops together of Oats At the mouth of the River Cluid the valley on the land seemeth to be lower and to lye under the Sea and yet the water to the admiration of the beholders never overfloweth into the valley There are many things in the world that are not as they seem besides Hypocrites Near Holy-well in times past was a rich Mine of Silver Hard by Kilken is a little well that at certain times ebbs and flows In this shire is that excellent Well called Saint Winifrids Well or Holy-Well so famous for the strange cures of aches and lameness that it hath done The water ofit is extream cold and the brook that flowes from it hath so plentifull and violent a stream that it is presently able to drive a mill The stones about it are as it were spotted with bloody spots and there are many red stones in the bottome of it The moss that grows on the sides of it is of an exceeding sweet smell and they say though some of it be given to every stranger that comes yet it never wasteth Yorkshire YOrkshire being a shire of a very large extent the biggest in England hath variety of air and as great variety of soil some barren and some fertile In some parts of the Shire viz. near Shirburn are quarries of Stone the stones whereof being newly hewen and taken forth of the quarry are very foft but seasoned with wind and weather of themselves become very hard and durable And in other parts is a kind of Limestone which being burnt serves to manure and enrich those lands that are cold and hilly About Pomfret and Knaresborough grows great quantity of Liquorice About Knaresb also is great store of yellow Marle which it may be isa kindly earth for production of Liquorice because of the same colour with it But whether the like Marle be as plentifull about Pomfret I cannot tell So much indeed Speed saith that great plenty of Skirriwort or Skirrets grow about Pomfret but he saith nothing of the quality of the soile It is reported that at the suppression of the Abbies by Henry the eight in a certain Chappell in York a Lamp was found burning in a Vault or Sepulchre under ground wherein Constantius the Emperour was supposed to have been buried Which kind of Lamps Lazius means when he saith that in old time they had a way to preserve light in Sepulchers by an artificiall resolving of gold into a liquid and fatty substance which would continue burning for many ages together There are many iron Mines about Sheffield About the year of Christ 759. the Town of Doncaster was burnt by fire from heaven Some of the inhabitants about Dichmarsh and Marshland are of opinion that the land there is hollow and hanging and that as the waters rise the land is also heaved up And the like saith mine Author Pomponius Mela hath written of Antrum an Isle some where in France About Brotherton is a yellow kind of Marle found which being cast upon fields makes them bear good Corn for many years together Querie Whether the ground here as about Knaresborough would not be proper for the planting of Liquorice The River Wherfe is a mighty swift River roaring and sometimes driving the stones in it before it Though this River have many waters fall into it yet at Tadcaster Bridge it is in a manner dry at Midsummer but in the Winter it is so deep that the bridge is scarce able to receive so much water It seems by the story that this River hath many great shoots into it and that it is fed chiefly by land Springs which run highest in Winter Of the swiftness of Rivers we have spoken before At Tadcaster Limestone is digged which is counted a very good and strong Lime The Abby of Fountains hath Lead Mines near it Near Burrow Briggs are certain Pyramids standing which are supposed by some to have been made of a factitious stone compounded of pure sand Lime Vitriol and some unctuous matter See before what we have said touching the Stonehenge upon Salisbury plain Under Knaresborough is a Well called Dropping-well in which the waters Spring not out of the veins of the earth but diftill from the Rocks that hang over it This water turns wood into stone for wood put into it will shortly after be covered over with a stony bark and at length become stone as hath been often tryed saith Speed Alevinus in an Epistle of his to Egelred King of Northumberland speaks of the raining of blood on St. Peters Church at York even in a fair day which descended in a very violent manner from the top of the roof of the Church And thereupon breaks forth into these words May it not be thought that blood is coming upon the land from the North parts And not long after to fulfil his prediction the Danes invaded England and among other their outrages burnt the City of York At Giggleswick a mile from Settle and a way-bit are small Springs not distant from one another a quoits cast the middlemost of which at every quarter of an hour ebbs and flows about the height of a quarter of a yard when it is highest and at the ebbe falls so low that it is not an inch deep with water The little River Derwent increased by rain doth often overflow its banks It seems there are great shoots into it and great windings in it The Rivers Humber and Ouse have a very forcible current and flow with a great noise being dangerous for those that sail therein Great store of Goats about Sureby And upon the hills of this Shire toward Lancashire is the like for Goats and Deer Near Flamborough Head saith Cambden it is reported that there are certain waters called Vipseys which flow every other year out of blind Springs and run with a very violent stream through the low Land into the Sea They rise they say from many Springs meeting together within the ground which makes their stream so forcible on a sudden When they are dry it is a good sign but when they break out they say it is a certain sign of dearth to follow Yet when I travelled here saith he I could hear nothing of these Springs although I enquired very earnestly after them Scarborough Castle hath a little Well of fresh ater springing out of a Rock Scarborough is the chief place for catching of Herrings at time of the year In our great grandfathers days saith Cambden the Herrings kept altogether about the coast of Norway but now in our times they swim every year round about Britain by shoale in huge numbers About Midsummer they shoale out of the deepand vast Northern Seas to the coasts of Scotland
countrey and takes in another Which obliged these Birds to seeke for their peculiar food where it was to be had We read in our Chronicles that at the time when field Mice did so swarm in Denge Hundred in Essex in the yeare 1580. that they eat up all the roots of the grass c. a great number of Owles of strange and various colours assembled and devoured them all and after they had made an end of their prey they took their flight back again from whence they came The reason of which I conjecture to be the same with the former For that which produced these Mice in that great abundance was an extream dripping warm year and a mild and moist winter as countrey men assure us Keppler himself belives is the constant cause of that Vermine Now because though God can yet nature cannot extend the same extremity of weather all over the world but as is most probable when there is an extremity of warmth and moisture in one countrey there is as great an extremity of cold and drought in another even as we see that the reason why it it flows in one Port is because it ebbs in another the reason I say or at leastthe cansafine qua non hence it follows that the extremity of of warmth and moisture that we had then in England could not have been without as great an extremity of cold and drought in some other countreys which because an enemy to generation especially to that of this Vermine made them fail most certainly in those other countreys whose Nature and temper is apt to produce them more constantly and abundantly and it may be almost alwayes Whence these painted Owls strangers to us but not to those countreys where the abundance and constancy of food makes them daily Guests very likely were forced by hunger to seek out food which provident Nature had provided for them in other places where their stay was no longer then till they had spent their provision and then ad pristina praesepia All which these flying Pilgrims might very well do without any great notice how and whence they came and whither they went because they are birds of night and travel onely in the dark And I conceive the reason of several birds leaving us and returning again at set times of the year to be much like this either they find that food that pleaseth them here among us at some times of the year which we have not for them at others or which is probable in some birds they delight in one certain degree of heat or cold and as they find the constant temper of the season to grow hotter or colder they accordingly take their flight more Northernly or Southerly and if the winter prove very mild then the Winter birds as Fieldfares c. come not quite home to us finding their due proportion of warmth in countreys more Northerly then we and if the Winter prove extreme sharp then they flye beyond us to the southward yet taking our climate by the way at the beginning of the sharp weather they give a prefage to countrey people of a hard Winter by their early appearing Every Hill almost in Cornwall sendeth out a spring whose waters are pleasant and wholsom That the springs should be so frequent in a barren countrey I do not wonder for where the vegetables are but few and small to spend the stock of rain that falls there must needs be the more left to soak into the earth and make springs And that the waters of these springs though strained through the Tin-Mines should be all pleasant wholesom not Medicinal or purgative I conceive the cause may be for that Tin is a fast metal and not apt to dissolve and communicate its self to the water that passeth through it as appears also by its slow rusting Whereas iron which is not so fast but more apt to rust easily gives a Tincture to springs as appears by Tunbridge wells and makes them medicinal For fishes they have these kinds viz. the Shoate a fish proper to Devonshire and Cornwall it is like a Trout but lesser and nothing near so good as a Trout Peale Trout and Salmon which breed in fresh water and live in salt The Trout Peale come from the sea between March Midsummer into the rivers to shed their Spawn The Salmons chief coming is between Michaelmas and Christmas for till then the rivers are too shallow for them The Salmons are fattest when they come first from the Sea they pass up as high as any water can carry them to Spawn the more safely and to that end take advantage of the great rain floods And after Christmas they return to the Sea and as the spring comes on the young fry follow and it hath been observed that the Salmon Trout and Peale haunt the same rivers where they first were bred The nature of the Salmon is that if in the night he see any light as of a Candle or of Lightning he will come to the top of the water and play in and out The Cornish-men use to take Salmons and Trouts by tickling them under the bellies and so throwing them on the land Sharkes in the rivers Lobsters Crabbs many of the Crabbs breeding in Cockle-shells and many of the Lobsters in Wrinckle-shells as my selfe have seen saith mine Author and being grown they come forth and live in holes of rocks from whence at low water they are dragged out by a long crook of Iron Oysters of wch they hold that there are male female Oysters the female Oysters about May or June have in them a milk which they then shed and whereof the Oyster is ingendred the little ones at first cleaye in great numbers to the mothers shel waxing bigger toward Michaelmas they fall away and fall asunder one from another onely here and there some are fast knit together two three or more in a cluster that nothing but violence will severe them Some people have a conceit that in Summer they are all sick as if the males did breed their wives children and out of season as indeed the milky are But some Gentlemen saith M. Carew have found the contrary by experience eating of them at all times of the year without danger Oysters have this property that though taken out of the water they open against the flood time and close upon the ebbe Yet they will close before if they chance to be touched whence it once hapned saith the same Gentleman that an Oyster lying open did by his sudden shutting catch three young mice by the heads that were going to eat him Soale and Playce both which follow the tide into the fresh rivers Eels some whereof are bred in fresh water and are of the best tast The great rain floods after September break their beds where they breed and carry them into the Sea the other Eeles called Conger-Eeles are bred in Salt water and when they are grown a little they go
into the Ocean Porcpisce and Seale the Porcpisce is a very big fish and black they chase the smaller fish from the Sea into the rivers leaping up and down the water oneafter another puffing like a fat Lubber out of breath and so follow their chase as far as any water will carry them which the fishermen observing get below them with their Boats and cast a strong net cross the stream with which and their loud and continuall shouting they fray them from retiring till the ebbe hath left them and then they take them The Seal-fish is like a Pig ugly faced and footed like a Moldwarp he loves musick or any loud noise and after the noise wil come a shore almost above water and sometime many of them will come a shore and lye sleeping in holes of the cliffe where they kill them with Guns Seale and Porcpisce use to be cut in pieces and powdered and it seems being so ordered they are eatable Scallops Seahedgehogs both which are sound on the Sea coasts The Sea-hedgehog is restaurative being enclosed in a round shell like a loaf of bread handsomely wrought and pinked and guarded with prickcles the Sheathfish which is also found upon the coast it is as big and as long as a mans finger and tastes like a Lobster but is more restaurative Pilchards the Pilchard is a little fish and a great multiplier he comes up into the fresh water between Harvest and Allhollandtide pursuing into the rivers a fish called a Britt upon which hee seeds He is also himself a prey to a bigger kind of fish called a Plusher which is like a Dog-fish and leaps up now and then above water Other fish likewise prey upon the Pilchard as the Tonny fish the Hake a fish so called as also a kind of bird called a Gannett the Starfish which is held to be contagious but whether it be that fish which in Kent the fishermen call 5 fingers and 12 fingers I know not Tonny and Turbot which they use to boil and preserve fresh in Vinegar c. On the North side of Cornwall and to the Westward of Foy few or no Salmons are taken The cause whereof I think is because there both the Seas are too unquiet for them as commonly they are about Promontories and the mouths of swift rivers such as Seavern and because there are no rivers of any competent bigness thereabout fit for them to spawn in There swims in the Sea upon this coast a round slimy substance called a Blobber which is thought to be noisome and hurtfull to the fish which I suppose is that that is very frequent in the river of Medway by Rochester and called there a Water-gall For Sea fowl they have these following viz. Gulls Pewets and other Sea fowls which breed in little Islands laying their eggs in the grass and not building any nests and they have young ones about Whusuntide And here mine Author relates that an old Gull was known for many years together to come and feed young Gulls kept tame in a Gentlemans yard joining to his house that bordered upon a cliff of the Sea Puffins a fowle which hatcheth in holes of the Sea cliffs and whose flesh tasteth like fish Burranets a fowle that hatcheth also in holes of the Sea cliffs and when her young ones are hatched she leads them sometimes a mile or better into the land where they are ordinarily taken and kept tame with Ducks There are also Sprayes here the same fowle that Pliny calls Haliaetos but it is not eatable The Chough is a peculiar bird to this County being found no where else in England it haunts the Seas but feeds not upon fish His bill is sharp long and red his leggs red and his feathers black It is a very unlucky bird and mischievous like the Pye for he will hide mony and other little things and will carry sticks of fire about and set barns stacks c. on fire He is frequent about the Alpes There are many Lepers in Cornwall who are thought to contract that disease from much eating of fish especially newly taken and more especially from the eating of the Livers of such new fish but some have it as an heriditary disease from their Ancestors The ancient Cornish men were excellent archers they would shoot an arrow 24 score their Arrow was a Cloath yard long wherewith they would pierce any ordinary Armour One Mr. Robert Arundel would shoot 12. score with his right hand with his left hand and behind his head And one Robert Bone shot at a little Bird upon a Cows back and killed the Bird without touching the Cow In Cornwall they find that sea sand is more fructifying and enriching then land sand by reason of its saltness as they think And they further observe that the Sand is the better by how much the farther down in the sea it lyes They use also ouzy mud to lay upon their land but it is not altogether so good as the Sand. There is also a weed called Orewood whereof some grows upon Rocks under high-high-water mark and some is broken from the bottom of the sea by rough weather and cast upon the next shore by the wind and flood and with these Weeds they compast their Barley Land This floating Orewood that is cast a-shore by the flood is now and then found naturally formed like ruffs and Combs Upon the shore of this County in many places are found shells of sundry fashions and colours as indeed there are upon many shores elsewhere and in some places on the shore there are Nuts to be found like a sheeps kidney but flatters with a hard brownish rind and the kernell is without taste and as they say good for Women in travell Edgecomb house by Plymouth is a very healthful dwelling though near the Sea The cause is because it is hilly rocky and free from marishes For which reason the Country about Dover in Kent is found to be healthfull too though lying just upon the Sea This house is famous for two things first for the brave Eccho about it and then for a sort of Stone that they dig near it which serves for building lime and marle and all Some Gentlemen in this Country have for their delight Salt-water pond into which if you cast Oysters of trees Oysters will grow upon them At Trematon in Cornwall in the Parish Chancell a Leaden Coffin was digged up in which being opened was found the proportion of a very big mans body but being touched it turned to dust It was thought to be the body of Duke Orgarus who as Speed saith married his daughter to King Edgar for there was an inscription on the Coffin that signified it was the body of a Duke whose heir was married to a Prince Saltash is a very healthfull place In this Town there is a Well the water of which will never boile peason to an eatable softness On Hengsten down a little above Plimouth are great store of Cornish Diamonds
plentifully because Herbarists say that they are a distinct sort of Pease differing from our common Garden and Field-Pease and love to grow on such desert shores near the sea side as is said before in Kent about Sandwich and Dengeness where they grow every year and never miss Ralph Coggeshall an old Author reports that near Oxford about the year 1187. a fish in all parts like a man was taken and kept 6 months in the Castle there whence he escaped again to sea Story saith he was taken in a Fisher-mans Net A story much like this we have in the life of Periskius written by the learned Gassendus which compared with this makes me give a little credit to that which Pliny reports that a Triton or Man-fish was taken on the shore of Portugal and that another was caught in the streights of Gibraltar But I give not the like credit to the fable of Nubrigensig touching two green boys of the kind of Satyres that should rise out of the ground at Wulpit coming from the Antipodes NORFOLK THis County hath a sharp air especially in in the Champian and near the Sea and the Spring and Harvest are late The soil is in many places good but it is generally Olayie or a fat Chalk And though it be healthy in some places yet by compasture of sheep the heaths are made mighty rich for Corn and when they are laid again from bearing of Corn they yeild a sweeter and more plentiful feed for sheep This County also yeilds good store of Honey and Saffron but the best Saffron is about Walsingham The inhabitants of this Countrey as Cambden relates are observed to be naturally very capable of the niceties and quirks of the Law and those of them that bend their studies that way prove generally the best Lawyers They are also he saith of a passing good complexion In the shore of this County every September is a great fishing for Herings it being the nature of that Fish in great shoals to dance out once a year about our Island and keep its duetime season upon the same shores unless its course be a little retarded by storms and foul weather coming from the Sea into our narrow Seas by the North of Scotland and going out again by the Lands end of Cornwall and taking this shore in its way in September It is reported that Herings are no where more plentiful then on the coast of England The River Bure in this shire is incredibly full of fish For the finding out the cause of this enquiry should be made what kind of soil the head springs issue from and what kind of shore it washes Generally the slowest Rivers caeteris paribus are fullest of fish And this I take to be one reason why the Thames is more pisculent or ful of fish then the Severn The River Yare by Norwich is very full of a kind of fish called Ruffes which saith Cambden have a body all over rough with sharp pricky fins It delights in sandy places like the Perch and is as big in colour brown and duskish above but of a palish yellow beneath it is marked by the chaws with a double course of half circles the eye for the upper half of it is of a dark brown for the nether part of it somewhat yellowish the ball of it black and there is a line goes along the back which is fastened to the body as it were with an overthwart thred it is all spotted over the tail and fins with black speckles when the fish is angry the finnes stand up stiff and after its anger is over they fall flat again It is a very wholesom Fish and eats tender and short and tastes like a Perch One cause of its tenderness I conceive to be its roughness without and the sharp prickliness of its finnes Even as it is probable that the tenderness of venison is caused by the seperation of so great a quantity of hard matter as the hornes of the beast consist of from the Mass of the body This Ruffe is a very rare fish to be found in other Rivers Query whether the banks of Rivers that produce peculiar fish do not produce peculiar plants because the peculiarity of the fish seems to proceed from a peculiar tincture of the Water which it cannot have but from the earth St. Bennets in the Holm hath such fenny and rotten ground about it that saith Cambden if a man cut up the Roots or Strings of Trees c. it floteth aloft on the Water and follows one whithersoever he pleases Hereabouts also are Cockles and Periwinkles sometimes digged up out of the earth which makes some think that formerly it was overflowed with the sea The ground about Winterton like that of Bricatium in Africk mentioned by Pliny is the richest fattest rottenest and easiest to plough of any in England Upon the shore of this shire Jeat and Amber are often found and sometimes Hawks are taken Cambridgeshire THis County by reason of the Fennes hath but a sickly air The soile yields very good Barly and good store of Saffron The herb called Scordium or Water-Germander groweth very plentifully in the Fenns Of this they make that well known Cordiall and Diaphoretick called Diascordium In the Country about the Fenns saith Speed water-Fowle is so plentifull and cheap that five men may be wel satisfied with that kind of fare for less then a half penny In the Fenns when they have mowen their lid as they call it that is their grass which is exceeding ranke as much as will serve their turns they set fire on the rest in November that it may come up again in abundance An Advertisement for Grasiers in other Counties Huntingtonshire THe hilly part of this County is for the plough and the valley for pasture which is reckoned as good as any in England The inhabitants burn much turfe which they have in good plenty from the adjacent moors At Ayleweston in this shire are two little Springs the one fresh the other somewhat brackish The latter they say is good for Scabs and Leprosie and the other for dim sights Wittlesmere-lake and other Meers near it in this Shire do somtimes in calme and fair weather suddenly rise tempestuously with water-quakes by reason as some think of vapours breaking violently out of the earth Which may well be for the ground near it is rotten and hollow The Natives that dwell about these Meers are heathfull and live very long but strangers are subject to much sickness Northamptonshire THis County hath a wholesome air and a very rich soile By Collyweston in this shire slate stones are digged The River Nen runs by the South side of Peterborough in the middle of which as William of Swaffham saith is a gulfe so deep and cold withall that even in Summer no swimmer is able to dive to the bottom of it yet in is never frozen in Winter for there is a Spring in it whence the water always riseth and bubbleth up
again But saith Speed no man can tell whether they are produced naturally or brought thither in veins In the year 1571. Marcley hill in the East part of the shire with a roaring noise removed it self from the place where it stood and for three days together travelled from its old seat It began first to take its journey February the 17th being Saturday at six of the clock at night and by seven of the clock the next morning it had gone fourty paces carrying with it sheepe in their cotes hedge-rows and Trees whereof some were overturned and some that stood upon the plain are firmly growing upon the hill Those that were East were turned West and those in the West were set in the East In this remove it overthrew Kinnaston Chappel and turned two High-wayes near a hundred yards from their old pathes The ground that thus removed was about 26. acres which opening it selfe with Rocks and all bore the earth before it for four hundred yards space without any stay leaving Pasturage in place of the Tillage and the Tillage overspread with Pasturage Lastly overwhelming its lower parts it mounted to an hill of twelve fathoms high and there rested after three dayes travel Cambden thinks this was that kind of Earth-quake which Philosophers call Brasmatias Brecknockshire THree miles from Brecknock is a hill called Mounch-denny that hath its top above the clouds and if a cloak hat or staffe or the like be thrown from the top of it it will never fall but be blown up again nor will any thing descend but stones or metalline substance or things as heavy On the very top of the hill called Ca dier Arthur riseth a Spring which is deep like a Well and four square having no streams issuing from it and yet there are Trouts found in it Two miles East from Brecknock is a Meer called Llynsauaihan which as the people dwelling there say was once a City but the City was swallowed up by an Earthquake and this water or lake succeeded in the place They say likewise that at the end of Winter when after a long frost the ice of this lake breaks it makes a fearful noise like thunder Peradventure it is because the lake is encompassed with high steep hills which pen in in the found and multiply it or else the ground may be hollow underneath or near the lake Through this lake there runs a River called Levenny without mixture of its waters as may be perceived both by the colour of the watet and also by the quantity of it because it is no greater then when it entred the lake The non-mixture of two waters doth doubtless proceed from nothing else but the oiliness of the one and the acidity or if you will have it the acetosity of the other Water for we see that oil and vinegar will not mix Radnorshire THis Shire hath sharp and cold air because of the Snow lying long unmelted under the shady hills and hanging Rocks whereof there are many Montgomeryshire THis shire bred excellent horses in times past There is nothing else rare or observable here for our purpose Monmouthshire THis County hath good air but bad ways The two Rivers of Uske and Wye are full of Salmons and Trouts And they say that when the Salmons grow out of season in the one River they come in season in the other But in which of the two it is that Salmons are in season from September till April which is the ordinary and general time-for Salmons I cannot learn though the thing it self be averred by men of the Countrey The River Wye at Chepstow riseth every Tide to a great heigth Of the cause of it we have already said something At Lanthony Abbey saith Cambden the rain which the Mountains breed falls very often the Wind blows strong and all the Winter almost it is continually cloudy and misty yet there are seldom any diseases there and the grosser the air is the milder it is The Moor or Marsh near Chepstow suffered great loss in January 1606 For when the Severn sea saith Cambden at a spring-tide upon the Change of the Moon was partly driven back for three dayes together with a south-wind and partly with a very strong pirry from the Sea troubling it it swelled so high that it came rushing in a main upon the tract lying so low and also upon the like flats in Somersetshire over against it and overflowed all overthrowing houses and drowning cattle and some people We have already said that this flood happened when the Moon was in Perig. not that we exclude the change of the Moon and the convenient sitting of the wind to be the joint causes in the effect We onely would say that more causes greaten the effect On Gold-cliff are yellow stones of a golden colour and glittering by the reflection of the Sun-beams which hath made some suspect that there might be a mine there Merlin prophesied that when a stont Prince with a freckled face should passe over the Ford called Rydpencarn being in a River called Nantpen-carn the Welch should be subdued Which accordingly came to passe for Henry the second who passed over this Ford was freckle faced And as soon as the Welch men heard where the King came over their hearts failed them because of this prophesie and so they submitted through too much credulity saith Cambden It is not impossible that King Henry might choose to go over at this Ford because of the prophecy and his enemies credulity the more to facilitate his conquests Glamorganshire THis shire hath a temperate air and is generally the pleasantest part of all Southwales On the top of a certain hill called Minyd-morgan is a monument with a strange character which the dwellers thereabouts say if any man read the same he will dye shortly after This is not improbable for if a chid of three months old read the three first verses of Homers Illiads I am confident hee will not live three dayes to an end Upon the River Ogmore and near unto Newton in a sandy plain about one hundred paces from Severn springs a Well the water whereof is not very clear in which at full Sea in the Summer time can hardly any water be gotten but at the ebbe of the tide it bubbleth up amain In Summer time I say for in Winter the ebbing and flowing is nothing so evident because of the veins of water coming in by showers or otherwise Besides it is observed that this spring never riseth up to the brink or overfloweth Polybius saith the same of a certain Well at Cadiz Clemens Alexandrinus saith that in Britain is a Cave under the bottome of a hill and on the top of it a gaping chink And when the wind is gathered into that hole and tossed to and fro in the womb of it there is heard as it were a musicall sound like that of Cymballs It is most likely that he speaks of the Cave at Aberbarry in this shire the story agreeing very
near with the quality of the Cave It is mentioned by the Lord Verulam in his History of the winds to this effect In a certain rocky cliffe in which there are holes if a man lay his ear to them he shall hear diverse noises and rumbling of winds under the earth These noises Cambden saith are to be heard as well at the lowest ebb as the higest flood Pembrokeshire THis shire hath a good temperate and wholesome air The soile yields Pit Coal and Marle It appeareth by Giraldus Cambrensis that the Flemmings that inhabited this shire in his time were very skilfull in sooth-saying by looking into beasts inwards In the Rocks in this shire there breeds a rare kind of Falcon which is thus described The head is flat and low the feathers laid in rows the legs pale and wan the claws slender and wide spread and the bill soaked round About 300 years ago it is reported that for 5 generations the Father of the Family in the Earledome of Pembroke their name was Hastings never saw his son At the time when Henry the second made his abode in Ireland were extraodinary violent and lasting storms of wind and weather so that the sandy shore on the coast of this shire was laid bare to the very hard ground which had lien hid for many ages And by further search the people found great Trunks of Trees which when they had digged up they were apparently lopped so that one might see the stroaks of the Axe upon them as if they had been given but the day before The earth looked very black and the wood of these Trunks was altogether like Ebony At the first discovery made by these storms the Trees we speak of lay so thick that the whole shore seemed nothing but a lopped grove Whence may be gathered that the Sea hath overflowed much land on this coast Asit hath indeed on the shores of many Countries bordering upon the Sea which is to be chiefly imputed to the ignorance of the Britans and other barbarous Nations who were long without the knowledge of Arts and understood not those ways to repress the fury of the Sea which now we do For without doubt since the knowing age of the World the Sea hath not gained upon the land one quarter of that it did before About Kilgorran are abundance of Salmons taken and there is a place called the Salmons leap as there is the like also in other Rivers for this reason The Salmon coveteth to get into fresh water Rivers to spawn and when he comes to places where the water falls down right from some high places and some such places there be in many Rivers he useth this policy He bends himself backward and takes his tail in his mouth and with all his force unloosing his circle on a sudden like a lath let go he mounteth up before the fall of the stream And therefore these downright falls or little Catarracts of water are called the Salmons Leap In the Isle of Scalmey grows abuudance of wild Thyme Cardiganshire AT the head of the River Istwyd are some Veins of Lead found In the River Tivy in times past the Beaver or Castor hath been found but now they can find none of them The Beaver is an amphibious creature that is lives indifferently in the Water and on the Land His fore-feet are like a dogs but the hinder feet are whole-skinned like those of a Goose. His dog-feet serve him ashore to run and his Geese-feet in the Water to swim His tail is broad and gristly which he useth as a stern to direct and turn his course His skin is ash-coloured somewhat inclining to blackish It is a very subtil creature The Chronicles report that while David Menevensis Bishop of St. David's refuted the Pelagian Heresie at Llan-devi-brevi the earth whereon he stood and preached rose up by Miracle to a certain height under his feet Cacrmardenshire THis shire as most hilly Countreys hath a wholesome air The soil is not said to be very fertile but onely in some places to yield pit coals In Carreg Castle is a Well that like the sea ebbs and flows twice in four and twenty hours Merionethshire THe air may be wholesom but the soil is but barren For it is very full of spired Hills being the most Mountainous shire in Wales except Caernarvon shire This shire is also subject to many and extraordinary great winds Near Bala is a great pool of water that drowns at least 160. acres of ground whose nature is as they say such that the high land-floods though never so great cannot make this pool to swell bigger but if the air be troubled with violent tempests of winds it riseth above its banks The River Dee runneth into this pool saith speed with a sharp stream and slides through it as they say without mixture of waters For in this pool is bred the fish called Guinjad which is never seen in Dee And in Dee Salmons are taken which are never found in the pool Upon the sea-coast of this shire great store of Herrings are taken at the time of year The sea beateth so sore and hard upon the West side of the shire that it is thought it hath carried away part of it The Welch people tell great wonders of Caer-Gai in this shire but what they are I know not Cambden tels us that the people of this shire are much given to idleness and wantonness I much wonder atit becauseitis generally observed that hilly Countreys are least subject to those two vices breeding for the most part hardy and warlike people Indeed I have heard how truly I cannot say that Cambden was not altogether so ingenuous in this Character as he should have been for they say when he came to visit this County in his preambulation he received some unhandsom affront at one place which provoked his choler to bestow this brand of insamy upon the Merioneth-shire men Caernarvonshire THe air of this shire is sharp and piercing Here are extraordinary high hills the highest in all Wales on some of which the Snow lyes long and on others it lyes all the year long hard crusted together A thing not at all to be wondred at since on the Alps and many other Mountains much more southerly then our Island it doth the like The consideration of which hath bred an opinion in me that the Globe of the Earth and Sea is of an Elliptick or Oval form that is like an Egg. And my reason is this I suppose that every yeare under both the Poles there falls a quantity of snow either little or much in the time of the suns being at the contrary Tropick and likely enough at other times of the year too which the Sun when he hath greatest power upon it cannot melt all And this is more then probable because not only in Greenland but also here in this shire and if we wil believe Munster on the top of the Alps too there are Mountainous Crusts of
the Pearl-bearing Muskles are found upon this shore which conceive by the dew which they suck in and they are to be found at this day both here in the rivers of Cumberland Scotland THE air of this Kingdom hath its variety according to the scituation of several places and parts of it but generally it is healthful because cold The Soil in the High-lands is very poor and barren generally but in the low lands it is good and beareth excellent Oats much ranker then ours in England The people are strong of body and of good proportion Their Cattel are but small Their best Nags are bred about Galloway For Bernacles or Soland Geese they have so infinite a number of them that they even darken the Suns sight These Geese are most rife about the Basse an Island at the mouth of the Frith going up to Edenbrough and hither they bring an incredible number of fishes and withal such an abundance of sticks and little twigs to build their nests that the people are very plentifully provided of fewel who also make a great gain of their Feathers and Oil. There hath been great dispute among the Learned about the generation of these Geese some holding that they were bred of the leaves of the Bernacle Tree falling into the Waters others that they were bred of moist rotten Wood lying in the Waters but it is since found that they come of an Egg and are hatched as all other Geese are Lough-Rian is ful of Herrings and Stone-fishes saith Cambden Near the head of the River Cluyd in Crawford Moor in wild waste places certain Husbandmen of the Countrey after great store of violent rain happened to find small pieces like scrapings of Gold which gave them hopes of finding a Mine of Gold Indeed saith Cambden there is Azure gotten out every day without any labour at all Thus saith Cambden Ortelius tels us That in Drisdale in Scotland is a Mine of Gold in which also is found that which they commonly call Lazure It may be these are but two diverse stories of one and the same thing There is a Well near Edenburgh saith Speed that floteth with Bitumen There is a Spring about two miles from Edenbrough saith Ortelius on the top of the Water whereof drops of Oil continually swim so as if you take none from it there wil be never the more and if you take any from thence there wil be never the less Which Oil is good for the roughness of the skin Likely the same thing diversly related In Galloway saith Ortelius is a Lake called Myrtoun part of whose Waters freezes in the Winter as other Waters do but the other part was never known to be frozen in the greatest Frost that ever were In Loghabre are Iron-Mines saith Cambden And somewhere in Scotland Ortelius saith there are Lead-Mines In the Province of Coile saith Ortelius about ten Miles from Aire is a stone hardly twelve foot high and 33. cubits thick called the Deaf Rock on the one side of which though you make never so great a noise nay if you shoot off a piece of Ordinance it shall hardly be heard on the other side except you be a good way off from it and then the sound may easily be perceived In Buqhan Rats are never seen And if any be brought in thither they wil not live This Country of Buqhan yeilds the finest Wool in all Scotland And Lorn the best barley The Rivers of the coast of Buqhan are wel stored with Salmon and yet they never enter into the River Ratra On the banks of this River Ratra in Buqhan is a Cave near unto Stanys Castle in which is Water which dropping out of a natural Vault presently turneth into Pyramidal stones of a middle nature between ice and hard stone It is brittle and crumbling and never cometh to the hardness of Marble And if the Cave were not rid of these stones as they fall the whole Cave would shortly be filled The Water of the River Nessa and of the Lough-Nessa is alwayes warm and never freezeth The Lough-Lomund is about 20. or 24. miles long and eight miles broad It is wel stored with fish and particularly with one kind of fish very wholesome and good called a Pollac which is no where else to be found Necham saith that this Lough turneth sticks into stones In this Lough saith Ortelius are thirty Islands whereof divers have Villages inhabited and Churches and one of them which is very good for feeding of Cattel flotes up and down in the Lake as it is carried by the Wind Not unlike those Islands reported by Pliny to be in the Lake Vadimon which are ful of Grass and covered over with rushes and reeds and swim up and down in the Lake There are the like also near St. Omars by Calais In the Lough Lomund also are fishes without finns Further it is the nature of this Lough to rage and rise in waves most of all in the fairest and calmest weather so that boats are often cast away The River Douglass hath a black greenish Water In the Wood Caledonia in old time were white Bulls wild and very fierce whose manes were like Lyons thick and curled And so hateful they were to mankinde that they abhorred whatsoever was handled or breathed upon by men And Martial and Plutarch speak of bears here In Sutherland saith Cambden there are whole Hills of white Marble Towards the North of Scotland saith Speed there be Mountains all of Alablaster and some all of Marble Fife is wel stored with Pit-Coals and the shores of it are as largely stored with Oysters and other Shel-fish In the Rivers Dee and Done is great store of Salmon and a shel-fish called the Horse-Muskle in which there grow Pearls as Orient as the best The Countrey of Athole is infamous for witches and wicked women Near Falkirk saith Lythgow remain the ruines and marks of a Town c. swallowed up into the Earth by an Earth-quake and the void place is filled with water It is credibly reported saith Ortelius that in Argile there is a kind of stone to be found which if it be covered but a while with straw or flax it wil set it on fire The same Author saith That in the Countrey of Carict are very great Oxen whose flesh is very tender and of a very pleasant and delicate taste and the fat never waxes hard but is thin like liquid Oyle and that the sea also on this coast affords great store of Oysters Cockles Congers Herrings at time of year c. Also he saith That At the mouth of the River Frith in the main Sea is a very high Rock out of whose top a spring of fresh water runs abundantly The snow lies all the year long upon the hills in Ross. A huge piece of Amber saith Cambden as big as an Horse was not long since cast upon the shore of Buqhan Note that this shore lies almost over-against the mouth of the Baltick sea in which sea
of it A foot of good Moor Tin which is held the best will weigh about 80. pound A foot of the Mine Tin which is meaner 52. pound of the worst 50. pounds Two pounds of good black Tin being melted will yield one pound of white Tin Tin also hath been made of that refuse that the Tinners formerly have rejected and with good profit And so much for the Tin-Works and for Metals In some places on the coast of Cornwall there are Pearls found that breed in big Oysters and Muskles yet though they are great they are not good being neither round nor Orient Here are also Agates and white Coral as they say It may be this white Coral may be of the same kind with Isidis Plocamos that grows about the Isle of Portland of which more hereafter About two miles Eastward from St. Michaels Mount at a low Water they cast aside the sand on the shore and dig up turfs that are full of Root of trees and on some of these they have found Nuts which seems to argue some inundation of the sea upon this shore I have heard the like story of a place in Scotland I shall not defend or impugne the truth of these stories onely this is manifest in Nature that the excluding of air from preying upon bodies preserves them much longer from putrifaction In the West part of Cornwall there are Bents growing on sandy fields which are knit from over the head in narrow breadths after a strange fashion of which they make mats In this shire grows greater store of Samphire and Sea-holly whose Roots commonly called Eringo-Roots are a great rescaurative and corroborative being preserved in Syrup then in any other part of England Some of the gaully grounds do also yield plenty of Rosa Solis more properly called Ros Solis a Plant that grows indeed in boggy and quagmiry grounds Upon the Sea-cliffs in Cornwall grow wilde Hysope Sage Pelamountain Majoram Rosmary and other fragrant Herbs The Husbandmen in Cornwall about May cut up all the grass of that ground which they intend to break up and till into turfs which they call Beating and raise these turfs so that the sun and wind may dry them the sooner and after they are throughly dryed they pile them in little heaps and burn them to ashes Then they bring in Sea-sand a little before ploughing time they scatter abroad those ashes the sand heaps upon the ground plough it in weh giveth heat to the root of the corn This sand makes the ground rich and if they strow it too thick the ground will be too rank and choak the Corn with weeds VVhen the ground is thus sanded and ordered the tiller can commonly take but two crops of wheat and two of oats and then is fain to give it at least 7. or 8. years layer or fallow and to till elsewhere But the inland Countrey requires not so much sand as the places by the sea side The tillable fields are in some places so hilly that the Oxen can hardly take sure footing in some places so tough that the Plough can scarce cut them and in some places so shelfy that the Corn can hardly fasten its roots They have two sorts of wheat viz. French wheat which is bearded and requires the best soil and brings the best crop and another wheat not bearded which is sown in the worser Land and yeildeth the less crop In those grounds that will bear no wheat they sow Rye yet in the western parts of Cornwall they sow Barley in the parts near the sea which they carry to the Mill within eight or nine weeks after they sowed it For fruits they have a sort called Whurts as also Chesnuts but whether they ripen there or not mine Author saith not and Grapes For though the Countrey be bleak yet Vines prosper well and their Grapes are pleasant of taste as in most other Southern parts of England They have little wood or timber unless in the East quarters of the Shire where there are some Coppice woods And hereabouts saith mine Author the Countrey people have a fable that the Snakes by their breathing about a hazle-wand do make a stone-ring of blew colour in which there appeareth the yellow figure of a snake and that Beasts which are stung being given to drink some of the water wherein this stone hath been soaked will thereby recover It is observed that strangers at their first coming into Cornwall are much visited with Lice and yet the cleanly Natives find no such matter For Beasts here are Marternes Badgers Otters some of which though they are all of the same kind live in the cliffs and there breed and feed on sea-fish and others live in the fresh Rivers which sometimes also feed on Lambs and Poultry Foxes who have their holes in abundance in the steep cliffs by the sea side Goats Rother Cattle Horses but they are but small and low but there are no red Deer at all Their draught Oxen have each his Name which he knows when he is at work VVhen Cornwall lay wast and open for want of manuring the sheep had generally little badies and course wool so that it was called Cornish hair but since it hath been manured their sheepe are little inferior to the Eastern Flocks for bigness fineness of wool often breeding speedy fatting and price and besides are sweeter Mutton and freer from the rot Most of the Cornish sheep have no horns and those that are so have the finer wool and those that are horned have indeed more in quantity yet courser yet in some places of Cornwall the sheepe have four horns Cornish Cattel are but small For Birds and Fowl Cornwall hath these following viz. Woodcocks in abundance Sparhawks the most useless of Hawks serving to flye little above six weeks in the year and that onely at the Partridge c. but there are no Nightingales at least very few A thing not to be wondred at by reason of the great scarcity of woods as I said the delight of that Bird Furzes and Broom being all that looks like woods in this countrey of the former of which they have great and of the latter good quantity In the West parts of Cornwall during the winter swallows are found sitting in old deep Tin-works and holes of the sea cliffs In Q. Elizabeths time a flock of Birds came into Cornwall about Harvest a little bigger then a Sparrow which had bils thwarted crosswise at the end and with these they would cut an apple in two at one snap eating onely the Kernels and they made a great spoil among the apples These birds are common saith mine Author in Gloucestershire and other apple countreys The cause of these birds rambling so far into Cornwall that year was I conceive the failing of fruit in the fruit countreys as in Gloucestershire Herefordshire Worcestershire c. and its taking in Cornwall and some other parts For we know that it often happens that fruit fails in one
The people about this Country observe that when Hengsten top is capped with a cloud a shower followeth soon after The Country men in Cornwall are great eaters of Garlick for healths sake whence they call it there the Country mans Treacle The cement or morter of the walls of Tintogell Castle resist the fierceness of the weather better then the stones The Town of Bodmin is held a very unhealthfull place and the cause of it they say is for that it hath one street a mile in length running due East and West on the South side whereof it hath a great high hill that hides the Sun from it and their Back-houses as Kitchins Stables c. are climbed up to by steps and every great shower washeth the Sulledge of them through the houses into the streets and which is more their Conduit water runs through the Church yard It will not be a miss to add here out of our Authour an odde presage of the Cornish rebellion in the time of Edward the sixth which happened in this Town of Bodmin About a year before that rebellion the Scholars of Bodmin School grew into two factions the one as they call it for the old religion the other for the new and this quarrell was prosecuted with some eagerness sundry times till by an unhappy accident no other then the killing of a Calfe during the beardless conflict complaint was made to the Master and so the play ended Which presage is seconded with severall others of the like nature out of ancient modern history but to impercinent to our design and too tedious to be here related In Saint Cleeres parish in Cornwall there are upon a plain six or eight Stones such as are upon Salsbury plain which like them two will be mistaken in the telling so that when they are told over a gain they will be found over or under the first number A thing that happens no doubt meerIy by their confused standing There is a story that passes concerning Saint Kaines well in this County which is that whosoever drinks first of the water be it husband or vvife gets the mastery A fit fable for the vulgar to believe At Hall near Foy there is a Fagot vvhich is all one piece of vvood naturally grovvn so and it is wrapped about the middle vvith a bond and parted at ends into four sticks one of which sticks is subdivided into two others It was carefully preserved and painted over that it might keep the better for many years by the Earl of Devon being reckoned a fore-token of his progeny For his Estate saith Mr. C. is now come into the hands of four Cornish Gentlemen one of whose Estates is likewise divided between two Heirs An Earthen Pot was found many years ago near Foy gilded and graved with Letters in a great Stone Chest and full of a black Earth the Ashes 't is like of some ancient Roman In Lanhadron Park there grows an Oake that bears Leaves speckled with white and so doth another called Painters Oak in the Hundred of East It is certain saith our Author that divers ancient Families in England are pre-admonished of their end by Oaks bearing of strange leaves There are two Lakes not far asunder nor far from St. Agnes Hil in this shire whereof the one wil live and Fish thrive in but not in the other By Helford is a great Rock lying upon the ground and the top of it is hollow like the long half of an Egg. This they say holdeth water which ebbeth and floweth with the Sea And indeed saith Mr. C. when I came hither to see this curiosity the Tide was half gone and the Pit or hollowness half empty There is a Rock in this shire called Mainamber which is a very great one and yet so laid upon lesser Rocks that the push of a finger will sensibly move it to and fro but not all the strength which men can make can remove it from the place The Cliffs to the Westward of St. Jes in Cornwall have streaks of a glittering colour like Copper which shew as if there were a likelihood of finding Copper there An exceeding big Carcass of a man was found by Tinners digging at a Village near the Lands end called Trebegean Hitherto I have borrowed all I have written save onely my conjectures at the causes out of Mr. Carew's ingenious Book called The Survey of Cornwall published in the year 1602. What Cambden and others say over and above is as followeth The chief time of the swarming as one would say of Pilchards about the shores of Cornwall is from July to November at which time they are taken garbaged salted and hanged in the smoak laid up and pressed and so carryed away and sold in France and other Countreys In the Rocks at the Lands end at a low Water are found Veins of white Lead and brass At St. Michael's Mount at low ebbs one may see Roots of mighty Trees in the Sands which shews that there hath been overflowing of the sea upon this coast hereabout as it appeareth also to have been about Plymouth Haven and other places adjoyning And it is manifest that the sea hath devoured much Land upon the coast of Cornwall towards Silley Islands For between the Lands end and Silley the sea is all of an equal depth of about 40. or 60. fathom Water being about 30 Miles in length onely in the mid way there lyes a Rock called the Gulf. The cause of the devouring of this Land by the sea I conceive to be its being a Promontory lying open to the merciless stormes and weather and withall lying in a place where two currents meet and part I mean the Tide as it comes in and returns out of the Sleeve or narrow Seas and the Irish Seas and Seavern the rolling and force of the Sea being apt to carry before it all that stands in its vvay according to the proportion that its own strength bears to the yeeldingness of the object But the cause why the Gulf rock was not washed away with the rest is because it was of too stubborn a matter and too fast founded in the Earth Nor can I think but that the Silley Islands were once all parts of the main Land of England and the like I conceive of Heysant in France an Isle lying before the Promontory of Britain but severed by degrees each from other and all from the Continent by the means above-mentioned At Stratton in Cornwall grows the best Garlick in all the Countrey It may be old Mr. Chamond before spoken of owed part of the cause of his great age to his living so near the best Garlick the Countrey man's Treacle On the shore of this shire about 30. or 40. years ago was a huge Mass of Ambergrise found by a poor Fisherman a story very famous and frequent in the mouths of several persons of credit and quality DEVONSHIRE THE west of this Shire being that which borders upon Cornwall is stored with Tin Mines
The River Lid by Lidford runs under ground At Combmarton are found Mines of Lead and some Veins of Silver Ordulphus this Countrey man for he was Son of Ordarus E. of Devonshire was a Giant-like man that if William of Malmesbury say true would break open the bars of Gates and stride 10. foot 'T is probable he was one of somewhat a larger proportion then ordinary and so might give a fair occasion for the Hyperbole and that the brawniness and big-bodiedness of the Cornish men may extend to their neighbours of Devonshire The air of Devonshire is sharp and wholesom the soil hilly and woody and here they use as in Cornwall sea-sand to mend and enrich their Land which makes it very fat and battle Devonshire abounds with Wool Kersies Sea-fish and Sea-fowl Load-stones have been found upon Dartmore Rocks of good value and vertue Upon Exmore are such stones huge and placed confusedly as are upon Salisbury Plain and one of them hath Danish Letters upon it directing passengers that way At Hubblestow in this shire was a battel fought by the Danes where their Banner called Reafan in which they reposed confidencce of Victory and Success was notwithstanding taken and Hubba their Captain slain It is reported by several persons of credit that during the late War at the time that Exceter was besieged by the Parliaments sorces an infinite number of Larks came flying into the Town and settled in a void green place within the Walls where they were killed by the besieged in huge quantities and eaten DORSETSHIRE THE Air of this Shire is healthful and the Sea yeildeth the shrub called Isidis Plocamos growing without leaves like Coral When it is cut it waxeth hard and black and is brittle It groweth among that useless Sea-Weed called Algar and is most plentiful about the Isle of portland About Birtport or Burport grows the best Hemp in these parts of England The River of Sture affordeth great store of Tench and Eeles Probably 't is a muddy River Alume and Coperas is made at Canford in this Shire the reason I suppose is because the shores of the Sea not far from it may afford Copperas stones for the purpose in good quantity At Shaftsbury as say some of our Historians lived in times past one Aquila which yet some wil have to be the Bird of that name who prophesied that the Brittish Empire after the Saxons and Normans would return to the old Britans There was never any age of the World but it afforded a Prophet for a pleasing improbability and the greater or more pleasing improbability the more the Prophets At Pool in the year 1653. June 20. it is reported that it rained warm blood The particulars of which would be well worth the while to enquire after because Peireskius the noble French Philosopher contends that that blood falls not out of the air but is a superfluous matter remaining after the hatching of a Butter-flye and left in such places sometimes where no rain can come to drop It were easie to enquire the true particulars of it being so late a prodigy I once had a conceit but I had no reason to cherish it long that this Blood might be engendered of some Vapours drawn up by the Sun from that part of the Sea where the cruel Sea-fight was fought between the English and Dutch not far from this Town and not long before this time as if the crimson'd Sea had afforded a Crimson Vapour to make this rain of But this is not the first plausible error that I have had Query whether about Pool and in the Isle of Wight and other places in England where our Histories tell us it hath rained blood there be not generally greater store of Butterflies and Grashoppers then elsewhere In the Haven of this Town of rool the sea contrary to all other Ports in England ebbs and flows like another Euripus four times in 24 hours for first it flows a S. E. and N. W. Moon and then a South and by East and a North and by West Moon once more vvhich second floud is caused as Seamen conceive by the return of the fore-ebb vvhich coming from the Sussex Coast and so along between the Isle of Wight and the main Land of Hantshire strikes in here as lying in its vvay Note that Euripus in Eubaea is scituated almost like Pool At Hermitage in Dorsetshire it lyes I think in the vail of White Hart in the year 1582. 3. January the 13. being Sunday a piece of ground of three Acres removed from its old place saith Stow in his Summary and vvas carryed over another Close vvhere Alders and Willows grew the space of 40. Rods or Perches and stopt up the High-Way that led to Cerne a Market Tovvn and yet the Hedges that it vvas enclosed vvith enclose it still and the Trees stand bolt upright and the place vvhere this ground was before is left like a great pit The Portland men like the ancient Inhabitants of the Baleares Isles in the Mediteranean Sea are excellent slingers In the Isles of Purbeck are Veins of Marble running under the earth SOMERSETSHIRE IN this Shire the Air is mild and the soil generally very wet miry and moorish Of the hot Baths in this Shire at the City of Bath Johnson in his Mercurius Botanicus gives us this description Bath saith he lyes in a plain not great encompassed with Mountains almost of an equal height The Baths are four the King's Bath the Queen's Bath the Cross Bath and the Hot Bath The King's Bath lyes in the middle of the City being about 60. feet square and it hath about the middle of it many hot Springs rising whence it hath the greater heat The Queen's Bath hath no Spring in it but only receives the Water from the King's Bath from which it is onely divided by a Wall for which reason it is more temperate then the Kings In these two Baths there is a Pump to pump Water upon the diseased where strong Embrocations as Phisicians speak are required for often times the matter of the Disease is so contumacious that simple bathing wil not remove it The Cross Bath and Hot Bath are in the West part of the City The Cross Bath is Triangular and about 25. foot long and as broad at one end It hath not so many Springs as the Kings Bath and hot bath have and therefore is of a more gentle heat About 22. paces from the Cross Bath is the Hot Bath so called because formerly when it was not so large as now it is it was much hotter then the rest But now it is only as hot as the King's Bath or but little hotter It is 27. foot long 13 foot broad The Water of all these Baths in a small quantity seems clear and pellucid but if one look upon its surface in the Bath it lookssomewhat green or of a blew or sea-colour as Cambden saith and it hath a Bituminous unsavoury smell but almost no tast
at least it is hardly perceivable to the palate Once a week the Baths are empited and swept clean onely the Cross Bath because of its frequent use and its narrowness is sometimes cleansed twice a week For the nature of the water is that about 4. or 5. hours after the going out of the Baths the water casts out a foamy scum or filth which swims on the top of it and fouls it The Minerals that are conceived by learned Writers to give these Waters their heat and Tincture are Bitumen Sulphur and Nitre and there is Bitumen Sulphur and Nitre being in less quantity The Mineralness of these Waters appears also by a way that the people of Bath have to give Silver Money a Golden colour which is done with a Composition made as they say of the mud of the Bath and some of the Bath-Water and Urine mixed together with which composition they rub the Money which they intend to gild but the colour is but pale and faint and will quickly wear off Now that it is a Bituminous and Sulphury matter that gives this Water its heat and tincture besides its Medicinal Vertues as that it dryes heats dissolves softens opens attracts digests cuts and is abstersive c. there is this manifest proof that the Countrey hereabouts is full of Cole-Mines especially about Bristol and the southermost parts of Glocestershire as Mengerfield Westerley c. and so also under Mendip-Hills that part of them that lyes towards Frome-Selwood And all Naturallists agree as they have reason that Coale is a Bituminous and sulphury matter For that it is a Bitumen is manifest by its black pitchy viscosity and its melting as it burns And that there is a quantity of Sulphur in it is as evident by the Brimstony smell the Embers of them give as any one may find that will but hold his head a while over a pan of them as also by their burning blew many times especially when they hurn eagerly as in frosty Weather whence many people reckon the fires burning blew a slgne of frost and hard weather And which is yet a further argument the Coale hereabouts hath abundance of Veins like Gold or Brass in it as I have often observed my self and it may be observed every day for indeed there is nothing more common a thing which I could never observe in New-Castle Coal though this Cake as that doth and doth not burn all away to a white ashes as the Coale which they dig about Staffordshire and which I think they call Canell-Coale There are saith Cambden a kind of pit-coals digged near the River Frome with which Smiths use to soften Iron These are the Coales I mentioned before under Mendip Hills toward Frome-Selwood That they should soften Iron is no wonder since we see any Coal or the like violent sire doth the same but whether they have a singular power thatway above other coal may be further enquired It is reported that about Uphill Parish by the sea-side not far from Axbridge within these half hundred years a parcel of Land swelled up like a hil and on a sudden clave asunder and fel down again into the Earth and in the place of it remains a great Pool At Keinsham in stone quarries are found stones in the form of a Serpent like the Whitbay stones of which I shal speak more in Yorkshire onely here is the difference between them whereas those at Whitbay want heads some of these have Hereabouts also saith Cambden grows Percepier or Parsley-break stone an Herb proper to England bitter hot biting and sowre without stalk with herby Flowers never above a span high It grows naturally all the yeer long it is extremely dieuretical and very quick in operation Yet however Cambden puts it down as a special rarity in this place our modern Herbarists make no such rarity of it for Mercurius Botanicus saith indefinitely that it grows in Agris Siccioribus that is in dry grounds and others say that it is commonly to be found in airable fields after Harvest At Bristol it flows a 11. or 12. Ells in height every Tide an extraordinary proportion in comparison of most places on the English shore The cause I suppose is the extreme wide and direct mouth of Severn lying open to the Vast Atlantick Sea where the Tide comes rolling in a-main and being contracted as it comes in higher into the River and land-locked and not being able to fall back again til it ebb without in the Main by reason of the continual succession of Water must needs swel to that height in the Severn and by consequence very easily communicate part of his burden to the Avon of Bristol Not far from Bristol is the famous Rock called St. Vincents Rocks ragged and hanging over the bank of the River of Avon where saith Johnson is a Well of warm Water pleasing to the tast It flows out of the Clest of a great Rock is overflowed every Tide and left open to the air at the ebb for its spring breaks out at the Root of the Rocks the Water is much commended for Ulcers and calculous affections of the reins being taken inwardly It is also often applied outwardly to cure old sores with very good success saith he as I have heard those say that have tried There is moreover in this place a Vein of Iron in the Bowels of the Earth saith the same Author whence the water gets its vertue and a greater heat which it loseth by running a great way before it can get out But by my Authors leave it cannot be conceived how a vein of Iron should make water so hot since we see that iron Mines in other places work no such effect upon those Waters that run through them I rather conceive there it is some other Vein of Metal or rather Mineral there that is the cause of the heat and likely the same Mineral that causeth the heat of the Bath-Waters Much more I could say but I am unwilling to inlarge too far upon Plausibilities Note that this hot Well is not above 12. miles from Bath On the upper side of these craggy Rocks of St. Vincent are digged out pellucid stones sexangular or six cornered and quadrangular or four cornered which we call Diamonds Some will have them to be Chrystal but saith Mr. Johnson I think they are rather of the nature of Fluores For saith he I remember an Apothecary of Bristol told me the Lord of the place would not have them taken out of the Iron Mine which was the womb in which they were formed because the greater quantity of them make the Metal the more fluid and apt to melt And Agricola tells us that Fluores are very like Diamonds but not so hard and that they are used in the melting and trying of Metals till they be throughly tried for saith he they make the matter in the fire much more fluid And Kentmannus in his Catalogue of Fossils reckons Pellucid Fluores sexangular and like Crystal
Of these St. Vincent Stones Cambden speaks thus They are saith he so plentiful there that one may fill a bushel with them and they are all either four cornered or six cornered And saith Speed saving their hardness they are as good as the Diamonds of India On another Rock more Western then St. Vincents Rock there are found Diamonds enclosed in hollow and reddish Flints after a wonderful maner and the Earth it self is red there too At Chedder near Axbridge is a Spring so plentiful of Water presently that it drives twelve Mills within a quarrer of a mile of the head of it The reason I suppose is for that the head of it ariseth in a corner been encompassed round with steep barren hills save onely that way which the stream runs which pour out all that plenty of Water they contain in their bowels into this head-spring where it all meets as in a center and there rusheth forth in a vast abundance In the Isle of Athelney in this shire was in ancient time a Monastry which was so contrived that the whole Frame thereof hanged upon four main Posts made fast in the ground So saith Cambden out of William of Malmesbury It is credibly reported saith the same Author Cambden that there was a Walnut-Tree in the holy Church-yard at Glastenbury that did never put out leaf before St. Barnabas day and upon that very day was very rank ful of leaves but that is now gone and a young Tree set in this place Also that there is Hawthorn in Wirall Park hard by Glastenbury that upon Christmas day sprouteth forth as if it were in May. This is reported saith he by very credible men that live thereabouts But it is since as credibly reported that the malice and fury of the late wars hath destroyed this Hawthorn too There is at Bristow a Church called the Temple the Tower whereof shakes to and fro when the bells ring so that it hath divided it self from the rest of the Building from the top to the bottom the breadth of three Fingers and openeth and shutteth whensoever the bell is rung ` There is about a mile Eastward from Bath a great hill and on the top of it a very large barren Plain called Landsdown under which very probably if search were made would be found the Mineral or Furnace that heats the bath-Bath-Water but no doubt it lies so deep that it would not be worth the time the pains or the cost to search after it it seems by the very sight of it to be pregnant of some such matter These were my thoughts at first touching the Bed of the Minerall that heats the Bath but Dr. Meara of Bristow hath since taught me to lay down that conjecture by shewing me the Copy of a Letter written by himself in Latine to Dr. Prujean of London touching astrange thing that happened in July 1659. at the Bath the abstract of which I shall take the boldness to give the Reader in the Doctors own words as followeth Aquis Calidis 4 o nonas Aug. 1659 Amplissimo Excellentissimo D. D. F. Prujean Medicinae Doctori c. Ampl. Excel Domine QUod jamdudum factum oportuit c. hostiam autem adfero tibiz ut auguror non ingratam fortuitam scilicit detectionem Zetematis non ignobilis de cansa Caloris Thermarum hujus loci cujus investigatio clarissimos medicos diu exercuit Illustrissimus D. Fairfax qui cum Conjuge Valetudinari jam Aquis Calidis haeret cum nudiustertius apricandi causa non procul ab urbe obequitaret casu offendit cretam quandam nivei candoris sparsime terrâ in exiguis cumulis emergentem ad instar terrae à talpis egestae Hujus Portionem domum attulit mihique ostendit Friabilis est spontè ferè in scobem levissimam abit saporem exhibet manifestè acidum sine astrictione sed paulatim mordicat ac ixflammatoriam strangulationem in faucibus parit ut non dubitem illam multo chalcantho abundare nec esse omnino Arsenici expertem In frigidam à me effusa confestim ebullitionem vehementem excitavit non secus as si calx esset viva pedetentim aqua tam insignem calorem concepit ut ovis citò coquendis paresset Quum haec Creta in Thermarum vicinia reperiatur verisimile existimo aquam thermalem hoc igne calescere Non ignoro authores passim Thermarum calorune Sulphuri aut Bitumini ascribere Verùm quamvis negari non possit Magnam Bituminis Sulphuris copiam in his scaturaginibus reperiri ijsque has thermas abunde impregnari convincat cura scabiei ulcerum tremoris paralyseos c. dubito tamen an eorum aliquod fermenti aquam calefacere nati rationem habere possit quum utrumque aciditate fermentationis opifice destitutum sit neutrum verò in aquam conjectum fermentationem aut calorem producere possit quum eorum consistentia tenax sit viscida Bituminis praesertim ut aqua in minimas eorum particulas expeditè se insinuare non possit fit ut ad ejusmodi fermentationem sint inepta Cujus contrarium in consistentia friabili minimè cohaerente hujus Cretae continget Locus ubi hoc fossile fuit repertum terra est spongiae instar porosa ut facile appareat illud florem esse sive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mineralium fermentantium unà cum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spiritibus sursum eluctantem Verùm quid in hà c obscuritate potiùs statuendun sit tuo judicio ego libenter subijcio gratesque quam possum maximas humanitati tuae refero c. Vir Ampl. Excel Famulus Devinctissimus Edm. Meara The English thus in effect Bath August the 2 d 1659. To the Worshipful his very much honored friend Fran. Prujean D. of Physick c. W. and H. Sir WHat I should have done long since c. The Sacrifice I bring to your Altar will not I conceive be ungratefull It is the strange accidentall discovery of a noble Mistery touching the cause of the heat of the Baths here the search into which hath long exercised the most famous Physicians the manner of it was thus The right Honourable the Lord Fairfax who continues still at the Bath with his Lady riding abroad not far from this City two days ago to take the air by chance found a kind of Chalke as white as snow working here and there out of the ground in little heaps like earth cast up by Moles A piece of this he brought home and shewed me It is a crumbling matter and almost of its self turns to a small light dust its tast is manifestly acide without astriction but by little and little biting and causing an extream hot strangulation in the mouth so that I am perswaded it hath much Chalcanthus in it and is not altogether without Arsenick I put it into cold water and presently it fell a boiling and bubbling apace just as if it had
that severall springs and rivulets were quite dryed up by reason of the precedent drought which raged most in 1651 52 and 53. As the head of the stoure that riseth near Elham in Kent and runs through Canterbury was dry for some miles space and the like happened to the stream that crosseth the Road way between Sittingborn and Cantsrbury at Ospring near Feversham which at other times ran with a plentifull current but then wholly failed like the Brooks in Israel in the days of Ahab The Stonehenge upon Salisbury plain in this shire is counted the most admirable rarity that our Island affords It is in this manner There are in a pit great stones standing upright Some being 28 foot high and 7 foot broad in three ranks round like a Crown and overthwart them are laid others with tenants and Mortises Now the great wonder and question among the learned is how these stones came hither For say they it is not likely that they were ab initio placed here by the God of nature because the whole Country round for some miles affords not a stone hardly either great or smal And they seem too vast to be brought hither by waggon or the like carriages The learned Cambden therefore thinks that they were made there by art of pure sand and some unctuous cement even as those also in Yorkshire because anciently there was such an art of making stone And Pliny saith that the dust of Puteoli Puzzele being laid in water becometh stone presently and that there were Cesterns at Rome made of digged sand and lime which were so firm and hard that they seemed stone But notwithstanding the authority of this great Scholar Iam clearly of opinion that they are naturall stones and placed there ab initio Then which I think nothing is plainer For upon the Downs between Marleborough and Aubury not above 20 miles from Stonehenge which Downs are but a continuation or rather a part of Salisbury plain differing nothing from it but in the un-evenness are to be found abundance of great stones commonly called by the Country thereabout the Gray Weathers and at Aubury in an Orchard there are halfe a dozen or halfe a score stones little inferiour to the Stonehenge for hugeness some standing upright like the Sonehenge others lying flat on the ground And the Country here like that about the Stonehenge affords not a stone beside So that unless we wil have all these stones to be artificiall wee must grant the Stonehenge to be natural Now whereas this unstoniness of the Country about which we speak of seems to some a strong objection against the naturalness of the stones it is on the contrary if duly considered a great argument for it For what can be more probable then that Nature could not provide her selfe otherwise of Lapidifick matter enough to make these huge stones of but by robbing the circumjacent parts The more of that matter here the less hereabouts because nature wanting timber would fetch it nearest hand I have no more to add touching the Stonehenge but that near it mens bones are digged up many times The reason of which is because it was the ancient burying place for the Kings of the Britans About Sapworth near Sharstan are found abundance of stones somewhat like Cockles yet so apparently differing from their shape that by the very sight of them one may plainly see that they never were true Cockles as some do believe But of these I shall speak more in Gloncestershire In the Parish of Luckingten in the edge of this Shire formerly mentioned is a well called Hancacks-well the waten whereof is said to be very cold in Summer and Warm in Winter and is commended as a fingalar water for the eyes HANTSHIRE AT Portsmouth in this shire they boile Salt out of Salt-water which is our Bay-Salt being of a pale or greenish colour and by boiling it again with an art the have they make it exceeding white This shire is very plentifull for all sorts of commodities especially for Kerfies and Iron Out of the walls of Silcester in this shire a decayed Town grow huge Oaks of ten loadsapiece saith Stow that seem to grow to the very stones spreading both their tops and their roots exceedingly Also Near this Town of Silcester though the land be fruitful enough generally yet in some places as it were by Beds the Soil is nothing near so fruitful as elsewhere which makes men think that along these Beds the streets of the old town formerly went And which is observable these unfertile beds do intersect each other like streets The conjecture is not unlikely because the like is reported of the streets of old Richborough by Sandwich in Kent The Isle of Wight is a wholesom air ' and the dwellers very aged It affords plenty of Corn and the best Wool next to that of Lemster and Cotswald As also plenty of Conies Hares Pheasants Partridges c. Our Chroniclers tel us that in the year 1176. in the Ifle of Wight it rained a shower of blood for two hours together At Wickham in this Shire are Medicinal Waters It is reported that about Portsmouth is a race of small Dogs like Beagles that they use there to hunt Moles with which they hunt as their proper natural Game BERKSHIRE AT Finchamstead in this Shire in the yeare 1100 as Writers say a Well boiled up with streams of blood and continued so 15. dayes together whose Waters madered all others where they came A story not incredible though very strange because we read of several the like stories touching Fountains in other Countreys in Authors of good credit In this Shire is one of the fruitful Vales of England for Corn called the Vale of White Horse About the year 1348. saith Cambden being presently after the Conjunction of Saturn Mars in Capricorn was a very great Plague over all Europe and then was Wallingford being a bigger and more confiderable Town then now it is almost dis-peopled with it The Conjunction of Saturn and Mars that Cambden means was 1342. 43. in February and it happened in 25. degrees of Capricorn but in my opinion it ushered its pretended effect at too large a distance to entitle it self the cause of it Nor can I believe so small a cause could produce so great an effect conjunctions of Saturn and Mars happening constantly every two years and sometimes though very rarely three of them happening in one year as in the year 1640. in the last face of Libra and if Pitatus have calculated right in the yeare 1542. in the first face of the pestilent sign Virgo without any such extraordinary effects succeeding them And which is as observable as any thing in the yeare 1578. was a Conjunction of Saturn and Mars in 23. deg of Capricorn but two degrees short of the Conjunction 1342. and yet the following years were not guilty of any extravagant Mortalities Therefore I conceive it will not be amiss to ascribe rather
this black effect to something nearer 1348. viz. to the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1345. in 18. deg of Libra which Astrologers reckon the house of Saturn a Conjunction of greater importance and influence and so more likely to produce a greater effect And yet I would not be too bold to fasten it upon this Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter neither till further enquiry be made because other Conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter in Libra have passed over more lightly Unless we wil say that there may be some particular venom about the 18th degree of Libra which other degrees of Libra father off are not infected with And indeed in the year 553. we are told by Alsted that there raged so horrid a plague at Constantinople that there died 5000. in a day and sometimes 10000. in a day which was not above two years after a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 19. degrees of Libra which happened 1551. Cambden takes notice that abundance of Fern grows about Reading a Plant that loves gravelly and sandy places such as that Countrey is all about SURREY THis County is commended for a healthful air the cause is its sandiness and being an Inland County Under Holmecastle standing upon a Hill of Grit or crumbling stone is a great Vault of Arched Work Architects tel us that Arched Work is the more firm by how much the greater weight lies upon it The River Mole runs above a mile under ground and at the place where it falls into the ground groweth abundance of Box naturally Inquiry might be made by Herbarists whether the Earth be not of the same nature and composition where the same Vegetables grow naturally Near Non-such is a Vein of Potters Earth much commended of which Crueibles are made for melting of Gold c. The rising of a Bourn or stream near Croydon as the common people hold presageth death as the Plague and it hath been observed to fall out so The rising of Bourns in places where they run not alwayes we have before proved to be caused by great wet years which according to HYpocrates observation are generally the most sickly and if they prove hot as wel as wet because heat and moisture are the great disposers to putrifaction they prove also malignant and for the most part pestilential And the reason why the using of this Bourn doth not always presage the Plague is because all wet years do not presage hot It is observed that few or no Rivers do ebb and flow so far up from the Sea as the River of Thames which flows up as high as Richmond in this Shire The reason of which is very plain depending chiefly upon two very great causes The first is the coming in of the flood at both ends of this Island that is from the Westward by the Cape of Cornwall and from the Northward by the North end of Scotland which as our Books of Navigation tell us meet at a Rock called the Galloper which lyes right against the mouth of the River of Thames between it and the coast of Holland and Flanders about the mid-way with very great noise and rippling Now the two floods as I said meeting here must needs hinder the course of each other and by consequence make the Sea swell much in this place and so easily discharge it self by a strong flood into the neighboring River of Thames lying so conveniently for its reception The other cause is the motion of the Earth from West to East whibh carrying the banks of the Thames along towards the place where the mouth of it was but now must needs as it were draw the Water into it by leaving it behind And peradventure upon enquiry it will be found that the floods run more strongly for this reason up into those Rivers that discharge themselves into the sea on the East side of a great Iland or Continent then those on the West side and that where there are Currents or Streams that run thwart on upon a shore they beat more violently in calm weather upon Eastern then Western shores But whether this be the reason why on the East side of the Continents of Asia Africa and America there be many more small Islands then on the Western side of those Continents for so our Maps inform us witness Japan the Philippine Islands the Moluccos the Maldivae the two Javas Sumatra Madagascar c. on the Eastern side of Asia and Africk and the great swarm of Islands called the Summer Islands to which we may ad those vast shoulds on the coast of Brasil on the Eastern side of America or whether it be from the constant Intra-tropical Eastwind that galls the Lee-shores and hath in long process of time carved them so curiously into Islands is hard to say at present but must be left to a more through disquisition The Waters of Ebbesham in this shire are very famous and much frequented for their Medicinal virtue and purging by siege These Waters without doubt receive their Tincture from some Mineral-Mass that lurks in the neighboring-hills it may be under Banstead-Downs and that the bowels of the earth hereabout are pregnant of some such matter seeming by that Crucible-Clay mentioned but now found about Non-such which as I am told blushes something like Terra Lemnia in some places It is reported that on the hills by Farneham are Snake-stones to be found of the form but not of the colour of those at Alderley in Glocestershire SUSSEX THis is a Maritine County and therefore no wonder it affords plenty of Fish and Sea-Fowl The Soil is rich the Land low and the Ways deep It was anciently in a manner an entire Wood being part of the great Wood Andradswald which was 120. miles long and 30. miles broad In this County are many Iron Mines but the Iron here made is more brittle then Spanish Iron Also Here they make Glass but it is neither very good nor very clear The place at Battel where the fatal battle was fought between William the Conqueror and Harold looks of a reddish colour after rain I cannot think it to be the Conquerors Livery that it still wears No doubt that was worn out long since both colour and Cloath unless that kind of ground be more retentive of stains then others or hath better luck then the places where the great Battels of our late Warres have been sought where no signs remain at all of the Tragedies acted there Certainly it is nothing but the natural colour of the earth which it had before that Battel for all men know that in several parts of England the earth is more then reddish as in some places of the Weald of Kent and particularly at a place in the lower side of the Parish of Sutton-Valence The Downs in Sussex by the sea-coast because they stand upon a fat Chalk or Marle are abundantly fertile of Corn. Downs generally are barren because eit her they were ab initio of a hungry Clay or else if
great depth saith Cambden narrow at the mouth and very wide below which have distinctions of rooms and Chambers as it were with severall pillars of Chalk to support them out of which he thinks the old Britans dug Chalk to manure their Land withall as Pliny also saith And which is observable and much to the purpose they are not found but in Chalky and Marly soile The pits Cambden means I suppose are the great pit near the Town called Hagdale-Pit The great Chalk pit joining to the Road-way between Feuersham and Bocton There is another too on the right hand of the way going up from the Town toward Shelwich near Copton Farme-house Another between Davington Church and Stone Church to which we may adde one or two great pits in the parish of Norton in a Field not far from the Beacon-hill which are very deep and yet very narrow to the top Wheresoever the streets went in Richborow an ancient Town near Sandwich long since destroyed and gone the corn that is now there sowed in those places is but thin And it is reported that the cement of the old walls is as hard as the stone Great store of Sampire grows on the clifts between Deale and Dover The Weald for wood East Kent for Corn Rumney for meadow Tenbaem for an Orchard Sheppey Reculuer for Wheat Thaâ—et for Barley and Hedcorn for the brood of fat big and commended Capons At Dengeness for a mile and more grow abundance of Holly trees naturally among nothing but Beach and Pebbles And westward from Dengeness among the Beach grow peason naturally like Clusters of Grapes together in tast very like our field peason The like to which as also a kind of Hops do grow naturally among a great deal of Beach and Pebbles in the Marshes between the Isle of Thanet and Sandwich about a mile or better from the Town as I was told by an inhabitant of Sandwich Cambden supposeth that England hath formerly been united to the continent about Calais because in the middle between Calais and Dover the Sea is but 25 fathom deep even as between Sicily and Italy it is but 80 paces which Island likewise hath anciently been thought to have been united to Italy but on both sides of it the Sea is much deeper Moreover in the very middle between Calais Dover is one bank called Frowen-shoale which at a low water is scarce three fathom deep but within halfe a league of it to the Southward it is 27 fathom deep and to the Northward 25. Likewise the clifts are alike high about Calais and Dover and of the same matter and colour My opinion is that the Shallowness in that place may peradventure be caused rather from the narrowness of the Sea there and its being so near the place where the two floods meet that come in at both ends of the Island of which I spake before so by degrees work up the sand gravel stones c here in heaps which they wash from the ground as they come along and not from having been the Isthmus of England formerly For I have been told by credible men that between the Isle of Shepey and the continent of Kent at the place where the two floods meet that come in at both ends of the Island there is the like shelfe or shallow place that lyes cross from the continent to the Island which no doubt is caused by the same means But as to the likeness of the cliffs on both sides I am able to say nothing of it It is reported that at Sellenge and Egerton about 40 years ago were medicinall waters Cranebrook hath the name for good Beer It is reported that there are no moles in the Isle of Shepey and that if they be carryed over thither as it hath been tryed they will not live The Isle of Thanet is all Chalky and hath the name for the best Barley Query Whether Chalky land be not the most naturall soyle for Barley Tenham and the parishes in that levell are very unhealthfull The reason is because they stand low and among the marshes And another reason may be because theearth there is very rotten and quagmiry and therefore is apt to mix with the Spring-waters that issue from it and corrupt them The River Stoure that runs through Canterbury breeds the best Trouts in the South-East parts of England At Boxley Abbey about two miles from Maidstone is a Spring the water whereof as it is reported in nine days will turn sticks and such like wood into stone In the Parish of Lewesham about six miles from London is a Medicinall water It was found about the year 1651 and hath been since much frequented Taken in a good plentisull quantity it purgeth gently by urine and siege It riseth on a great Common upon the descent of the highest hill in that part of Kent and is supposed to issue from an Aluminous earth I spake before of the earth sinking at Mottingham I have since viewed the place and find the Country to be all a gravelly loose earth according to my Hypothesis The hole where the earth sunk in lyes in a water-course and is since by degrees filled up with that sulledge that great rains bring into it GLOUCESTERSHIRE THe hilly part of this County called Castwald abounds with fine wool small sheep which are long-necked and square of bulk and bone and hath a very pleasant air The low parts of it are exceeding fruitfull and rich in Corns so that as Cambden saith it returns an hundred for one The parts about Bristol afford great store of Coals that cake as New Castle Coal doth but yet differ from it as I have already said The Northern parts of it are as abundant in fruit And the Apple trees and Pear trees that grow in every hedge are not graffed but grow naturally by reason the ground is so inclined to bear fruit Yet the fruit for beauty and tast far exceeds all others and will keep till a new supply come Yea some of them will not wither or rivell in a whole year The part of Gloucestershire beyond the River of Seavern called the Forrest of Dean is stored with Iron Mines Speed tells us further that this Shire is very full of Vineyards which thrive very happily and bear very plesant Grapes so that the Wines made of them are little inferiour to the French Wines The River of Seavern is very swift and there is a daily rage and sury of its waters raising up the Sands and Mire from the bottome winding and driving them upon heaps somtimes overflowing her banks And the force of this rage is such that it will overturn a Vessell if it take it on the side Tewkesbury hath a name for excellent mustard About the Quire in the Cathedrall Church of Gloucester in an Arch of it there is a wall built in form of a Semicircle full of corners and if a man speak with a very low voice at the one side or end of it and
another lay his ear to the other being a good way distant he may very easily hear every syllable theotherspeaks This whispering place I have seen and surveighed very carefully It is in the form that I have described here A C D E F B is the passage of the voice or whispering place At A and B are the two persons to stand that whisper to each other At D the middle of the passage is door and entrance into a Chappel with Window Cases on each side of the door if I remember right The Chappel is in the place I describe it And to my best remembrance there are one or two places open upward in the roof of the passage My opinion is that the Chappel standing so in the middle much conduceth to the conveighing of the sound so entirely which is helped by the open places in the roof I speak of For they seem to draw in the voice wchelse would not so welenter into that narrow passage but reverberate back into that broad open place before the whispering entry And one thing which makes me think the Chappel doth a great part of the Work is for that we see in Viols Lutes and other Musical instruments there are holes cut into the belly of the instrument just under the playing or striking place which we find by experience do much augment the noise of the notes and make them more audible But in this and most other things I say I give but my poor judgement submitting it to the censure of the learned At Stroud commonly called stroud-Stroud-water they dye Scarlet the Water there as they say having a peculiar property to give the right tincture which other waters generally want So much variety there is in Water according to the several Earths that they pass through No Snakes or Adders to be found about Badminton I suppose the cause to be the barrenness and coldness of the Land the reabout for Snakes are bred out of rich fat and hot mould or mud whence we find them commonly about ditches and low rich shady grounds lurking under long grass of which this Countrey affords no great plenty Besides being an open Countrey it wants that shade and shelter that they delight in In the fields about Badminton are found many times Cylindrical stones long and round like a mans finger The inner part of them is like flint somewhat pellucid and of a sad brown colour and it is enclosed round on the outside with a whitish Putamin like Flint too About Badminton also are several holes called Swallow-holes where the Waters after any great shower of rain or in Winter when their Springs run fall into the bowels of the earth and are seen no more nor is it known whether ever they rise again The most remarkable of them are one or two in the way between Badminton and Acton Farfeild All that I can say to them yet is that in a Clayie and slatty Countrey if there be any inlets and passages into the Earth by reason of its discontinuity here and there they are likely enough to be kept open because such kind of earth is not apt to moulder with wet and fall in and so dam them up At Alderley saith Speed a Countrey Parish 8. miles from the Severn upon the hills to this day are found Cockles Periwinkles and Oysters of solid stone This place being but four or five miles from Badminton the seat of that noble Family that I have the honor to be a servant to I have very diligently examined and found it thus The place where the stones are found is partly a Sand and partly a Clay Cockles I found but neither Periwinkles nor Oysters But though I found not them yet instead of Periwinkles I found many Serpentine stones or Snake stones as they call them thereabout flat resembling the banner of Dan as it 's given in the Genealogies at the beginning of some of our English Bibles And instead of Oysters I found Scallops perfect fragments of them I mean pardon the seeming contradiction which I conceive had been broken with Ploughing They were exactly ridged in rows at certain short distances just like a Scallop-shell Moreover an honest inhabitant of the parish bestowed upon me a whole Scallop that is somewhat bigger then the ordinary size of Scallops with a perfect shell upon it ridged as is before said very naturally and having an irregular piece of stone growing to it No man that looks upon it would at first sight imagine it to be other then a true Scallop-shell so curiously it represents it in its colour and onely exceeds it a little as I said in its dimension Besides these I found other figured stones some resembling very much the Musclefish but they were somewhat bigger too then what they were like and others like the kernel of an Almond long and somewhat roundish with two edges opposite to each other and they were streaked and cranked like a Cockle-shell Other little stones I found somewhat bigger then a Hasel-Nut and some much less that were cranked in like a Cockle-shell but deeper and not so thick together as a Cockle-shel Some of them did resemble also the Cockle very near others not so much yet all did so sufficiently differ from the form of it at the supposed opening place of the Cockle that a man may easily judge that they never were Cockles for there the two shels were bent up in the fashion almost of a blobber-lip And that which is not unworthy our consideration is that they are few of them like one another some being flatter others more round some have the lip more turned up others less They have upon them a whitish shining shel and within they are for some I have broken a mass of little particles of a pellucid matter somewhat like Alablaster grown hard together The Countrey hereabout for some miles round upon the hills affords many of these last sort of stones for I have found them in gravel that was digged in Badminton and sometimes I have found of them growing to great irregular stones about the Countrey I have been told that about Sapworth by Sharston there are abundance of them to be found I found one of them in Witney Town seven Miles from Oxford upon a paved Causey How it came there I know not nor had I time to enquire whether the Countrey thereabout afford any store or any more of them The Snake-stones I spoke of have a perfect spina running all along the back of them as those also at Keynsham have but those at Keynsham are much bigger then these at Alderley and lye in another manner with little ridges like ribs on both sides of them all along from the head without to the tail within in the form almost of a Roman S. and in this they agree with those of Keinsham too Further the outer part of this snaky wreath is divisible and may be knocked off from the inner part of the wreath to which it is joined without taking
that you cannot sever them without breaking though they are distinguished with a perfect line I believe they were all knit together in such Columnes at first even those which are found single and that they were severed by frost or some such piercing cause Being told of these Rarities so nigh me I took a journey to see the place and gathered many of the stones and found them such as I have told you Being put into Vinegar they have a motion as other Astroites have though not so lively I suppose because of the shortness and roundishness of their points in the form of which I conceive lyes a great part of the cause of their motion Some of these stones like the stones at Alderly are deficient in their figure and have the defect supplied or rather Super-supplied with a rugged formless matter hard like it self I observed that the ground is a miry deep rotten Clay and extream bad way in Winter and which I wondred most of all at there were here and there great Pebbles as big as a mans fist or thereabout mingled with this rotten earth and by enquiry I found that this mixture of Pebbles was not from any mending of the high way but the meer originall nature of the Earth for I found these Pebbles in the fields as well as in the high ways So that since this thwarts what we said but now of Pebbles being the naturall companions of gravelly land we are willing to grant that as in Grammar so in naturall philosophy there is no general rule without an exception Query Whether in other places where the Star-stones are found as about Shugbury in Warwickshire and Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire the earth be so rotten deep and miry and withall whether there be any such great Pebbles mixed with it as here and in particular enquire At Purton passage over the River of Seavern where the shore as it is reported yieldeth these Star-stones also but they are bigger and the Columnes of them longer then at Lassington And indeed accordingly it is delivered to me as a miry ousy shore in some places and a quicksand in others very dangerous for horse and man at low water and one of the worst passages over the River at those times At Puckle Church about 6 miles from Bristol they dig a kind of Stone that is hard blewish broad and about halfe a foot thick and so even and the sides so parallel to each other as if nature had intended it for Tombestones The stones are many of them of a very great breadth and lye some six or seven of them one under another in bed and of about the same thickness all of them and then they come to a light blewish Clay belowwhich is no more of this stone to be found The uppermost bed of the stone lyes very near to the surface of the earth so that in one place near the Town in the high way a man rides for ten peirches or more as if he rode upon a pavement of broad stone or rather upon one entire stone OXFORDSHIRE THis County saith Speed hath a wholesome temperate air and rich soil There are in one place of this shire Stones set up in a round Circle like the Stonehenge called Rollrich stones The City of Oxford is a very healthfull place which Cambden thinks is because it is defended from the South wind and the West but lyes open to the North-East and East wind On the descent of Heddenton hill near Oxford rises a spring which runs down towards Kingsmill a mill so called lying over against Magdalen Colledge It is reported that this spring hath a petrifying quality and will in some short time if a stick be laid in it either turn it into stone or wrap it in a stony crust BUCKINGHAMSHIRE IN this Shire grows Beech in greater plenty then in any at least most Counties of England and it grows most in the Chalky parts of it The Sheep in the Vales of this Shire saith Speed have most excellent fine and soft fleeces About Marlow when their land is worn out they make it rich again with Chalking of it so that it bears corn abundantly Bedfordshire Hartfordshire BEdfordshire saith Speed hath temperate air and in the North good soile but the South not so good yet it is excellent good for Barley So that this County as also her next neighbour Hartfordshire hath the name for the best Barley in the Eastern parts of England In the year 1399 just before the warrs brake out between the two illustrious Roses of York and Lancaster on New years day the deep River that passeth between Suelstone and Harwood two villages not far from Bedford Town called Ouse suddenly ceased its course and stood still so that forward men passed three miles together on foot in the very depth of the Channell and backward the waters swelled up to a great height which some judicious men observing conceived was an ill omen of that division which followed shortly after between K. Richard the second and his people I dare not be surety for the truth of every circumstance of this story yet I believe the main of it may be true But I cannot conceive how so strange a thing should come about unless it were by a sudden frost the time of the year being seasonable for it which might congeal those waters that fed the stream at their first issuing out of the earth at the head of the River the rest of the water in the mean time passing away down because being in motion they were not so capable of congelation Notwithstanding the story mentions not a word of frost which peradventure might be the cause of it for all that the custome of those that tell such strange stories being prudently to conceale those particulars that are likely to bewray the naturall cause and spoil the miracle It being as naturall to the generality of visible creatures to love being the Authors of wonderfull relations as to laugh There was in time past an odd story of K. Offa's leaden Tomb which was once in Bedford Town that it appears often to them that esek it not but cannot be seen of them that seek it But whether the report continue still I know not At Aspley-Gowiz near Woburn is an earth that they say turneth wood into stone and that a woodden ladder was to be seen in the Monastery hard by which having lien a good while covered all over with it was digged out again all stone Dunstable stands upon a Chalky ground having four streets in each of them it hath a pond which is fed with rain and hath no Spring for they have never a well in the Town under twenty four Cubits deep and yet these ponds are never dry In our remembrance saith Cambden near Fishpoole-street in Saint Albans certain Anchors were digged up This is a very strange thing indeed and very well worth the Ventilating It puts me in mind of what the Poet Ovid sings in the
person of Pythagoras of Samos Vetus inventa est in montibus Anchora summis On tops of hills old Anchors have been found There is near St. Albans a Brook called Wenmere or Womere which never breaketh out but it foretelleth dearth and scarcity of Corn or else some extraordinary dangerous times shortly to ensue as the Common people believe See what we have said of the river Kennet in Wiltshire touching the breaking forth of unusuall Springs If now that it is a brook and runs but seldome it be of so ill portent let them that have a mind to smile say of how fatall a signification it was when it was a river and a Navigable one too as the Anchors before mentioned seem willing to perswade us At Ashwell in Hartfordshire rise so many sources of Springs together that they presently drive a Mill and become a pretty big River See before what we said of the Spring at Chedder in Sommersetshire MIDDLESEX THe air of this Shire is healthfull as being all a gravell and the soile rich as being generally flat and levell and having a ready help at hand the fat compost of a populous City At Barnet are medicinall waters very famous Heston a small village near Harrow on the Hill is very famous for yielding the purest flowr for Manchet The water of Crowders Well saith the Author of Tactometria on the back side of St. Giles by Cripplegate and that of the Postern Spring on Tower Hill have a very pleasant tast like that of new milk and are very good for sore eyes But Crowders well is far better of the two An ancient man saith the same Author in London whensoever he was sick would drink plentifully of this Crowders well water and was presently made well again and whensoever he was overcome of drink he would drink of this water which would presently make him sober again The Stews by the Bank-side saith Cambden in Southwarke were made to feed Pikes Tenches sat and to scour them from their muddy Fennish tast I have seen saith he Pikes panches opened with a knife to shew their fatness and presently the wounds have come together again by the touch of tenches and by the help of their glewy slime been perfectly healed up The shore of this Shire is washed by the goodly River of Thames which glidts along with a much more clear and gentle stream then the river of Severn The cause of the clearness of the Water is its running in a gravelly Valley and over a clear ground Gravel being unapt to mix with Water when it is stirred and too heavy to swim very far along with it The River of Severn as also the River of Avon that runs from the Bath and by Bristol is on the contrary a very muddy troubled Water because it washes a miry and ouzy shore almost all along For the gentleness of the Current in the Thames we are to know there are two principal causes of it the great winding of the River which locks in the Water that it cannot make that haste down to sea that it would and the low lying of the head Springs of it from whence there is but an easie descent to the sea And I think it is not amiss to note here that this easie descent of the Waters to the sea-ward is another reason why the tide flows up so high into the heart of this River For who sees not that the more steep the River the less way is the Tide able to force its way up into it Swift Rivers have alwayes their Heads lying high or their course direct or both Indeed in case swift Rivers do or did at first run winding to and again yet if their Springs lye high they will in process of time by their violence pare away the Promontories of their banks unless they be rocky and stubborn and make their way straighter There are in the Thames three other things worth observation to wit its Spring-Tides its overflowing its banks and its strange shifting of Tides at some times touching all which because it falls not unhandsomely into this place I shal deliver my conceptions in regard I have I think something to say to them which I never yet read And first for the Spring-Tides in the Thames and other Rivers which are higher Tides then ordinary that happen about every ful and change of the Moon the great French Philosopher Des-Cartes endeavours in his Principia Philosophiae to give us the reason of them by framing a most ingenious Hypothesis too long here to set down and telling us from the Theorique of the Moon that the Moon moves so in her Ellipsis or Oval-fashioned Orb about the Earth that at her ful and change she comes nearer the earth and in each Quarter goes farther from it whence according to his Hypothesis greater Tides must be at ful and change and neap or low Tides at the Quarters All which is for the most part true indeed and without doubt the Moon her nearness at the Ful and Change is the cause of the Spring-Tides then even as the Moon 's being further off at the Quarters makes the neap-tides then but there is another thing considerable in the business which Des-Cartes never considered and which I fear he never knew that is that the spring-tides come not just upon the day of the Full and Change but follow two or three days after and so do the Neaps too after the Quarters which is against him and seems to shake his Hypothesis I mentioned that makes the Spring-tides and Neaps to fall just on thedays of the Change Ful and Quarters To untye this knot then I conceive the cause why the Spring-tides are at the highest two or three days after the Ful and Change and not on the very day c. is the same with that why the sharpest pinching time of Winter comes not just at the shortest day when the Sun is at the lowest but in January about a Month or five Weeks after Why also the coldest time of the night is not at mid-night but about break of day Why the hottest time of Summer is in July a Month or five Weeks after the solstice and why the hottest time of the day is not just at noon but about two or three a Clock in the afternoon To illustrate the reason of which let us suppose a large Cistern which hath a Cock towards or at the bottom of it that constantly lets out six Gal. of water if there be so much in the Cistern in a certain space of time and over the Cistern suppose another Cock that conveys Water from some other place into this Cistern and which runs at first but very slowly but after by degrees faster and faster til at length it let in eight Gallons of water in the same space of time that the cock below as we said lets out six Gallons And further let us suppose that the cock above after it hath continued running for some small time after the rate of
the Wind and Weather I find against the second of February and the days before and after it 1653. 54. that the Wind blew hard at Northwest In all the other examples above-named I cannot inform my self how the Wind was no not in 1622. 23. though Kepler hath set down the Weather for that year because he hath said nothing at all of the wind And in 1656. though I was an observer that year too yet being in October afflicted with a fierce Quartan which had siezed me the August before my observations for that Month are very imperfect both as to Wind and Weather too so that I am at a loss how the Winde was then Nevertheless by that little light we have from the example mentioned in 1653. 54. I cannot but think that the cause of the shifting of the Tides is onely the overbearing of their course when they are at their slackest by a North-west Wind which is the most powerful Adversarie they can have upon our coasts as is said before For if a slow ebb be encountered ful in the teeth with a hard storm what can follow but a return of the Tide back again And if the North-west Wind either abate its fierceness or shift into some other quarters as the South-west or Northeast for some short time and then either return to its former place or resume its former force and do thus once twice and again which we know is not inconsistent with the nature and custom of the wind off at sea though at Land its wanderings are not altogether so sensible we shall easily believe seeing so plain a reason for it that there wil be a playing of the Tide to and fro and several floods and ebbs succeeding one another in a few hours space And it may be this shifting of the Tides is the more notable in the Thames because of its gentle ebb to Sea-ward which is the more easily turned whereas a swift Current in a River would prevail over these irregularities But let further observation be made how the Wind is disposed at the next shifting of the tides that happens which forsome private reasons I conceive will be in the next year 1661. if not this Winter 1660. I forgot to say in its due place that several great inundations speak in favour of my opinion touching the Moon in Perigaeo her greatning the Tides For I can assure you that for that great Flood Anno 1530. November 5 on which was made this Distich Anno ter deno cum sequi mille Novembris Quinta stat salsis Zelandia totasub undis That in the year 1551. 1552. January the 13. that horrible one 1570. on All-Saints day the first of November and that not able one in the year 1606. 7. January the 20. the greatest that was ever known in Severn and so fatal to Somersatshire Glocestershire and Monmouthshire they were all when the Moon was in Perigaeo as he that lists to caloulare or search the Ephemerides for those years wil find I have heard it reported but I would have further tryal made that the water of the Postern-spring on Tower-hill being let stand for several days to settle wil have in the bottom of it a yellow sediment much resembling Brimstone both in colour and substance ESSEX THeair of thisshire is temperate only towards the Sea it is aguish The Soil is for the most part good but in somparts so fruitful that after three years Gleab of Saffron which they plant much in the North part of the shire the Land for 18. more wil yeeld plenty of Barley without any dung or compost at all and so Saffron again Which Saffron saith Cambden in the month of July every third year when the heads thereof have been plucked up is after twenty days spitted or set again under mould and about the end of September it puts forth a blewish Flower out of the middle whereof hang three red chives of Saffron which are gathered before sun-rise and being plucked out of the Flower are dryed at a soft fire every acre of ground making 80. or 100. weight of moist Saffron which being dryed is some twenty pound Near Tilbury over against Gravesend there are such pits as those spoken of before in Kent of ten fathom deep in a chalky ground and of the same form At the mouth of the Thames lyes the little Isle of Canvey the Mutton whereof is much commended for its sweetness The salt-water about Harwich maketh all their springs brackish At Barklow saith Speed grows an Herb called Dane-wort very plentifully that beareth red Berries which is held by the common people to spring from Danes-blood This Herb is no other then that which Herbarists called Dwarf-Elder it grows in sundry other places of England as namely in the high way between Babchild and Greenstreet at a place called Radfield near Sittingburn in Kent Walfleet in this shire is commended for the excellent Oysters it sends to the City of London In the time of Rich. the 2d in the Eastern Promontory of this County very huge teeth were found and not far from thence in the reign of Qu. Elizabeth extraordinary huge bones were digged up They are thought to have been the bones and teeth of some Elephant buried there by their loving Masters the Romans In the year 1580. at Alhallantide an Army of Miceso over-run the Marshes in Denge-Hundred near Southminster that they eat up the Grass to the very Roots and so poisoned it with their teeth that a great Murrain fel upon the Cattle that grazed there But at length a great number of strange painted Owles came no man knows whence and devoured all the Mice The like vexation was at the same time in Kent saith Stow. It is reported that in 1648. there happened the like again in Essex But of this we have discoursed somewhat largely already in Cornwall SUFFOLK THis County is most of it Clay and rich Marl and the air so good that it is by some Physicians thought to be the best in England especially about Bury It yeelds much Butter and Cheese the Butter excellent good but the Cheese far inferior to that of Cheshire It is thought not without reason that the goodness of the one spoileth the other In the year 1555. saith Speed which was an unseasonable year that the Corn through England was choaked and blasted in the ear such a crop of Peason without tillage or sowing grewin the Rocks between Oxford and Aldbrough where never Grass grew or earth was ever seen but hard Rocks three yards deep under their Roots that in August there were gathered above a hundred quarters and there remained as many more in blossoming Cambden sayes the same but that the Peason grew about the end of September and brought down the price of Corn whereas before there was a great Dearth Query whether there grow not Peason in the same place every year though it may be in wet years such as 1555. proved in Harvest they grow up more
and that keeps it from freezing Leicestershire THe air of this shire is mild and wholesome and makes the inhabitants very healthfull and long lived Near Lutterworth is a Spring so cold that within a short time it turneth straw and sticks into stones In the North parts of the shire are store of Pit Coals which are of the nature of hardned Bitumen saith Cambden The people of Carleton as both Cambden and Speed say cannot pronounce their words wel but all of them in a manner have an illfavoured untunable kind of Speech fetching their words with much ado deep out of their throat with a kind of wharling whether it be by the nature of the soile or the water or by some secret operation of nature Thus say they but I have heard from some that were this Country men that it is Breson that is the Town of the Wharlers and not Carleton In the Rocks about Belvoir Castle is sometimes found the Astroits or Star-stone resembling little stars joined one to another wherein are to bee seen at every corner five beams and in every beam in the middle is small hollowness The Astroites of Germany being put into Vinegar saith Cambden will move it selfe and turn round but whether these of Belvoir will do so too or no I never tried I once saw an Astroite put into Vinegar which moved according as Cambden would have it but from whence it came or where it was gathered I know not onely I am sure it was none of those of Lassington for it was bigger much then they and not so much wrought At Barrow is digged the best Lime-stone in England being extraordinary strong Of which it may be was made the Morter that they used in building in times past which was in a manner as hard as the stone it self as appears in the walls of Leicester and other Cities at this day Notingham Rutlandshires THe air of Nottinghamshire is healthful and the soile rich being in some places clayie and others sandy In this shire are abundance of Pit Coals Also Here grows a stone softer then Alabaster which being burnt makes a Plaister harder then that of Paris And with this they floor their upper rooms and when it is dry it becomes as hard as a stone At Worksop grows the best Liquorice in these parts of England In the Town of Nottingham are many rooms with the very Chimneys Stairs Windows and the like cut and hewen out of the Main solid Rock Rutlandshire hath rich Land but it is red So that it stains the Wooll of those Sheep that feed on it into a reddish colour The air is temperate wholesome and not subject to fogs Derbyshire THis shire as most inland shires of England hath a wholsome air and in theSouth and East parts rich soile but in the North and West hilly with a black and mossy barren ground Which two differing natures of soile are divided by the River Derwent And this is in some places stained black with the soile and earth it passeth by The Town of Derby affords excellent Ale which kind of drink Turnebus saith is more wholesome and contributory to long life then Wine and that it is this that makes many of us live 100 years Yet Asclepiades in Plutarch saith it is the cold climate that keeps in the naturall heat in our bodies and makes us live 120 years Thus saith Cambden So much indeed is true that within these 100 years since the use of Beer hath increased among us which was first known about the year 1524 we live not generally so great age as formerly This shire is well stored with Milstones Crystal Alabaster and Whetstone And in the Peak withPit Coal Iron Lead A metal which France wanteth The Peak hath under it in many places close to the upper crust of the earth Limestone which makes it so fruitful that there be in it green grassie valleys and hills which bear full Oats and feed abundance of Cattle and Sheep The Lead-stones in the Peak lye but just within the ground next to the upper crust of the earth They melt the Lead upon the top of the hills that lye open to the West wind making their fires to melt it as soon as the West wind begins to blow which wind by long experience they find holds longest of all others But for what reason I know not lince I should think Lead were the easiest of all metalls to melt they make their fires extraordinary great In the Mines and Quarries in the Peak saith Cambden is sometimes found a kind of white fluor very like Crystall There is Stibiunt found in certain veins of earth in this shire And if so Speed is mine Author for it I wonder I hear of no medicinall waters near it For I think Newenham Regis in Warwickshire is too far from it and the waters of Buxton are not purgative For At Buxton nine Springs arise out of a rock within the compass of eight yards eight of which are warm and the ninth very cold These run from under a fair square building of free stone and about sixty paces of receive another hot Spring from a Well enclosed with four flat stones near unto which another very cold Spring bubbleth up These waters as daily experience sheweth are good for the stomach and sinews There is a Cave saith Speed called Eldenhole where it is confidently affirmed the waters that trickle from the top of that Cave which indeed is very spacious but of a low narrow entrance do congeal into stone and hang like Isicles in the in the roof and some are hollow within and grow Taperwise towards their points very white and something like Crystall In the Peak Forrest not far from Buxton is a wel that ordinarily ebbs and flows four times in an hour or thereabout keeping his just tides Warwickshire THis Shire is commended much for the wholesomeness of the air especially the Town of Warwick The soile is very rich especially the Vale of Red Horse which hath a red Earth and affords great plenty of Corn. Here is also great store of Wool and Iron especially about Bromicham At Gofford-gate in the East part of Coventry hangs the shield bone of a wild Bore far bigger then the greatest Oxe bone it is very likely to be an Elephants with whosesnout as the tale goes and you may believe it if you please the great Pit called Swainswell was turned up At Shugbury are found the stones formerly mentioned in Glouceshershire called Astroites or Star-stones At Lemington a Salt Spring riseth though a great way off from the Sea At Newenham-Regis are three Fountains which it should seem are strained through a vein of Allume The water looks and tasts like milk it procures urine abundantly it is very soveraign against the stone and for green wounds Ulcers and Imposthumes Being drunk with Salt it loosens the body but with Sugar binds it It turneth wood into Stone saith Speed which I my selfe saw by some sticks that
were fallen into it some part of them ash some part of them stone Worcestershire THis is a very pleasant County and fertile especially the vale of Evesham In some parts of it are many Salt Pits and Salt Springs It affords store of excellent Cheese The hedge-rows and high-ways are beset with Pear-trees of which they make Perry a very pleasant drink but generally very cold and windy But saith Cambden although the Pears be in such huge abundance yet are they not so pleasing to the tast Which if it be true I much wonder at it For certainly there is much reason to believe that where fruit trees are planted in hedgerows and highways their fruit should be better rellishred then fruit of the same kind planted in Orchards within the shade of other trees because those in hedgerows lye more open to the Sun and that heat that must concoct them to give them their true relish though on the other side I deny not that they are more subject to bsasting winds The Seavern here affords great store of fresh water Lampreyes they are saith Cambden like Eeles slippery and blackish but under their bellies something blew they have no gills but let in the water at seven holes on each side of their throat in the Spring they are sweetest and most etable for in Summer the inner nerve which serves them instead of a backbone waxeth hard The Italians make a delicate dish of them taking a Lamprey and killing it in Malmesey they close the mouth with a Nutmeg and fill all the holes with as many cloves then they roll it up and put 〈◊〉 Nut-kernels stamped crums of bread oyle Malmesey and Spices to it and so they boile it with great care and then turn it over a soft gentle fire of Coals in a frying pan The reason why Seavern affords Lampreys I conceive is its muddiness the Lamprey being a kind of Eele that breeds and delights in mire Other fish as is before said Seavern breeds not so plentifully because as men thrive best in clear air so sish in clear water gross air choaking the one and thick water the other At Droitwich are three Fountains of Salt water divided by a little Brook of fresh water passing between by the boiling of which Salt water they make pure white Salt Gervase of Tilbury an Historian not rashly to be credited saith that these salt Springs are most salt between Christmas and Midsummer and that the rest of the year they are somewhat fresh and not so good to make Salt of and that when the Salt water is run sufficiently for the use of the Country the Springs do scarce overflow to any wast and that at the greatestSaltness of it it is not allayed by the nearness of the fresh water to it and lastly that it is found no where near the Sea Cambden doubts the truth of some of these affirmations but of which he saith not Onely he saith that the Salt is made from Midsummer to Midwinter which is quite contrary to Gervase Indeed if there be any difference in the saltness of these waters in severall times of the year they should I think be fresher from Christmas to Midsummer because that half year all Springs but land Springs are highest run most plentifully by reason of the great wet season immediately foregoing which must therefore more dilute the salt And on the contrary the Springs between Midsummer and Christmas must be the lower because of the drought just preceding I have heard Masons in Kent that used to dig wells say that the Springs that feed their wells are lowest about Alhollantide and highest between Easter and Whitsuntide for the very same reason I could wish some ingenuous native would bestow upon us the perfect History of these Salt Springs in Worcestershire and Cheshire Some Philosophers trouble themselvs much about the cause of the Saltness of the Sea I think it needs not so much puzzle and ado If there bee salt Springs that run continually into the Sea and no part of the saltness of the water but that which is meer fresh ascend in vapour at the Suns call why should not the Sea be and continue salt There would rather be more fear lest the Sea should grow salter and salter by these Springs continually running into it but that the Salinae on severall shores of the world do rob it every day besides other losses it sustains and escapes that it makes through private passages in the earth There is a report of a medicinall Water found out lately about Eckington-Bridge about 7 miles from Worcester Staffordshire THe air of this shireis very healthfull yet in the North parts and Moreland it is very sharp the wind blowing cold and the snow lying long It affordeth good store of Albaster Iron Pit-Coale Which is thought to be the Lapis Obsidianus of the Ancients if it be at all in England for it is hard bright light and easie to be cloven in flakes and being once kindled it burns away very quickly And Fish whereof the River of Trent is full The meadows of this shire are so moistned withstreams and rivers runningby them that they look green in the middle of winter In Pensneth Chase is a Coal-Pit which saith Cambden was set on fire by a Candle through the negligence of a digger the smoak of it is commonly seen and sometimes the flame In this shire there runs a hill a long and so through the middle of England as far as Scotland like the Apennine in Italy In this shire they manuretheir land with Lime-stone The people about Wotton by Wolverhil in Moreland observe that when the wind sets West it always produces rain but the East and South wind which elsewhere brew and bring rain here bring fair weather unless the wind turn from the West into the South and this they ascribe to the nearness of the Irish Seas This observation I fear is somewhat imperfect and should be driven a little further by men able to make observation If the River Dove overflow its banks and run into the adjoyning meadows in Aprill it makes them extream fruitfull The reason of this is plain enough without further enquiry Indeed some Rivers overflowing their banks enrich more and others less according to the fatness or hungryness of their water The River Dove uses to rise extreamly within twelve hours space but it will within the space of twelve hours return again within its banks but Trent being once up and over its banks flows over the fields four or five days together ere the supersluous waters can get away Of this wee have given an account already speaking of the Thames and Seavern The little River Hans runs under ground for three miles together Cambden saith that Necham speaks of a Lake in Staffordshire but where it is he cannot tell that foreshews things to come by its roaring and no wild beast will enter into it but he thinks it is but a Fable And Gervase of Tilbury tells us of
another Lake in this shire called Mahall near a village called Magdalea which if hunters when they and their horses are tired do drink of and give their horses of it though it be in the hottest and most scorching weather they both become presently as fresh as if they had not run at all Likely to be as true as the former Lincolnshire IN this Shire upon the East and South parts the air is thick and foggy because of the Fennes c. yet very moderate and mild and the winds that come from the raging Seas disperse those vapours that they cannot much hurt The North and West part of the shire is fruitfull but the East and South are brackish and fenny yet extraordinary full of Fish and Sea-fowl especially Mallards which they take in August with nets This Shire yieldeth Flax and Alabaster and Plaister which I think is that they call Plaster of Paris or of that kind The ground about Crowland is so rotten that one may thrust a Pole into it thirty foot deep Also The ground in Holland apart of this shire so called is so wet that as one stands upon it the earth will shake under his feet and hee will bee ready to sink into it Nor shall you beside the paved Causeys meet with somuch as a little stone in it Here are also many quicksands which have a wonderfull force both to draw to them and to hold fast that which they have drawn Moreover the people here have no fresh water but only rain water and that in pits Which if they be deep becomes brackish presently And if they be shallow they dry up as soon About Barton upon Humber are abundance of Pewits Godwits Knots which are so called from Cnule the Dane and are thought to have flown hither out of Denmark and Dottrells a sim ple kind of bird much given to imitating These Dottrells are caught by Candle light in this manner The Fowler stands before the bird and if hee put out an arm the bird stretcheth out a wing If hee holds out his head or set forward his leg the bird doth the like and imitates the Fowlers gesture so long till the Fowler drawing nearer and nearer by degrees at length throws his net over him and takes him In the Isle of Axholme grows a sweet kind of Shrub called Galls as also Pets in the Moores I know not what that is and dead roots of Firre wood which in burning give a rank sweet smell Further there have been great and long Firre Trees found both in this Island and at Laughton upon Trent Also there is in this Isle much Flax and Alabaster But the Alabaster is more fit for Plaister then any thing else because it is brittle Shropshire THis County saith Speed hath wholesome temperate air affording health to the inhabitants at all seasons of the year This was verified in old Thomas Parre of Alberbury who was 152 pears old and dyed in the year 1635. The soile is generally fertile standing most upon a reddish clay and yields Pit Coals and Iron At Wenlock in the time of Richard the second was found a rich Mine of Copper Upon Cleehill grows the best Barley in the shire At Pitchford is a Well or Spring in a private mans yard whereon floweth a thick skum of liquid Bitumen which being cleared and taken off one day will have the like again on the morrow Try saith Cambden whether this Bitumen bee good for the falling sickness and have a powerfull property to draw and close up wounds as that in Judaea is known to have There is the like swimming of Bitumen in that lake in Judaea we speak of called Asphaltites supposed to be the place where Sodom and Gomorha stood as also in a standing water about Samosata and in a Spring by Agrigentum in Sicily Where the plot of the City Wroxcester lay the earth is more blackish then elsewhere and bears very good Barley In the year 1551. Aprill the 15. the English sweating sickness brake forth first at Shresbury and so dispersed it self over the whole land and killed abundance especially middle-aged people The first time of this sweating sickness was in the year 1485 saith Cambden a little after a great Conjunction of the Superiour Planets in Scropio The second time but more mildly yet the Plague accompanied it was Anno 1518 being 33 years after it upon a great Opposition of the same Planets in Scorpio and Taurus when it also plagued the Netherlands and high Germany too And the 3 time was 33 years after that again viz. Anno 1551. the year now spoken of when another Conjunction of those Planets in Scorpio took its effects but we must crave leave to tell Cambden that his pretended revolution of 33 years is not so for the middle sweat was not in 1518 as he affirms it but in 1517 as both Godwin and Stow tell us though we confess the Plague was in 1518. So that then there will be instead of 33 and 33 32 and 34. And that which will do this revolution more mischief is that there was a fourth sweat between the years 1517 and 1551 viz. Anno 1528 which Cambden never mentions besides another fift sweat that if I be not mistaken happened before 1517. Moreover whereas Cambden saith that the sweat 1485 was a little after a great Conjunction of the superiour Planets in Scorpio if by the superiour Planets he mean all the three Saturn Jupiter and Mars that was not so For neither did Saturn Jupiter Mars meet in the same degree of Scorpio nor were all the three Conjunctions which these three Planets made at that turn in Scorpio It is true indeed the Conjunction of Saturn Mars was in Scorpio about the 12th degree but it was in November 1483 almost 2 years before that sweat which began in September 1485 And the Conjunction of Saturn Jupiter was in Scorpio too about the 20th degree but that was almost a year before the sweat too viz. about Alhollanday 1484 But as for the Conjunction of Saturn Mars that fell not in Scorpio but about the 25 degree of Libra and about Alhollandtide 1483 not far distant from the time of the Conjunct of Saturn Mars so that the sweat was neither after a Conjunction of the superiour Planets in Scorpio nor a little after any Conjunction of them Again neither was the sweat 1517. upon a great Opposition of the same Planets in Scorpio and Taurus for the opposition of Saturn and Jupiter which happened in Taurus and Scorpio were all three of them in 1513. and 1514. and so was the opposition of Jupiter and Mars in Taurus and Scorp in Novemb. 1513. about the first degree of those two signs And for the opposition of Saturn and Mars and conjunction of Saturn and Mars which we grant happened both in one year and during Saturn his abode in Scorp too they both fell in 1513. the one in March and the other in December following Nor let it startle
any one that a conjunction of Saturn and Mars and opposition of Saturn and Mars should happen both during Saturn his being in Scorpio for those that know any thing in Astronomy must needs know that Saturn never passeth through any sign no not Gemini where he moveth swistest because in Perihelio but Mars gives him a conjunction and opposition constantly before he can get out of it nay sometimes he gives him two conjunctions and sometimes three beside the opposition especially if he be near his Aphelium as he is in Scorpio and yet now he did not Nor lastly let any man start at the three oppositions of Saturn and Jupiter that happened in 1513. and 1514. for all Astronomers know that it is a very rare thing or rather impossible for an opposition of Saturn and Jupiter to happen single they happening constantly every twenty years and as constantly by threes of which the reason is plain to any versed in Calculations So that it remains that the Sweat 1517. neither followed upon such an opposition of the Planets nor near it Lastly whereas he sayes that the Sweat 1551. was when another conjunction of those Planets in Scorpio took its effects this is wider from the truth then all the rest for there was no conjunction of the Superiors within six years of this Sweat For example the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 28. of Scorpio happened in September 1544 and the conjunction of Jupiter Mars happened in the 27. deg of Scorpio in January 1543. and 44. And for conjunctions of Saturn and Mars in Scorpio there happened none that year for the conjunction of Saturn and Mars that was fell in the beginning of Sagitarius though we confess there fell to admiration three conjunctions of Saturn and Mars in Scorpio in the yeare 1542. A very rare thing indeed such a triple conjunction of those planets having never happened since till the year 1640. But how Conjunctions should work seven or nine years after their celebration and not before is a secret in Astrology that I yet understand not In the year 1632. was indeed a very great opposition of Saturn Jupiter and Mars in Taurus and Scorpio the two Malevolents in Scorpio opposing Jupiter in Taurus the conjunction and two oppositions happening very near together yet there happened in the years following no such sweat as is pretended to be the effect of such conjunctions and oppositions so that the Astrological cause of those contagious sweats lyes yet in the darke I would adventure something toward it here but that it requires a distinct Treatise by it self Fracastorius attributes this sweating sickness to the Plaistriness of the soil here in England and yet it is so but in few places and to the moistness of the weather in those years but why it doth not reign constantly in such kind of soil in wet years he saith not Cambden thinkes that this contagion hath been long before 1485 as rife in England as since although it be not mentioned by Historians that is not impossible indeed for for that last Age wherein Saturn and Jupiter did use to meet in Scorpio our Chronicles are very empty and uncertain Eclipses of the Sun in Aries saith Cambden have been most dangerous to Oswestry for in the year 1542 and 1567. when the Eclipses of the Sun in Aries wrought their effects it suffered great loss by fire but most of all after this latter Eclips for there were then about two hundred houses burnt A good observation indeed but our Author observed not all for that which is most remarkable is that those two Eclipses happened within two degrees one of the other so that it may be the Ascendent of Oswestry as Astrologers speak is about the 27. deg of Aries And peradventure the reason why the late Eclipse of the Sun in Aries viz. 1652. March 29. had no influence upon Oswestry was because it happened in the 19. deg of Aries 8. deg distant from its Ascendent This is further observable and it looks as if there were something in it that in 1567. when Oswestry was burnt Milnall in Suffolk was burnt too and that though the Eclips in Aries 1652. had nothing to do with them perhaps for the reason above given yet within the time that Astrologers limit the effects of Eclipses two Towns in the same Shires viz. Bungay in Suffolk and Drayton in Shropshire were burnt as if there were a way to trace Ascendents from one Town to another and as if the Ascendents of near places were not far asunder But nihil temere statuendum de paucis enquire farther and see what I have written in my Syzygiasticon Instauratum published Anno 1653. where I have treated of the Ascendents of Towns in general and of the Ascendent of Teverton in Devonshire in particular Query also whether in February 1655.56 any thing extraordinary happened to the Town of Oswestry upon the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars in 25. degrees of Aries CHESHIRE THe air of this Shire is so healthful that the Inhabitants generally live very long And the warm vapors rising from the Irish Seas do sooner melt the snow and ice in this County then in places further off The soil is very rich yet observed to be more kindly and natural for Cheese then Corn and it is thought that it is the soil and not the skill of the Dairy-Woman that makes the Cheese so excellent the best in Europe Both men and women here have a general commendation for beauty and handsome proportion This shire saith Speed yeildeth Salt Metals Mines and Meres In the River Dee is great plenty of Salmons Giraldus Cambrensis who lived about the yeare 1200 saith that this River foreshewed a sure token of Victory to the inhabitants living upon it when they were in open hostility one shore against the other according as it inclined more to this side or to that after it had left the Channel And the relator doth in some sort believe it and so may any one else if he please This River d ee upon the fall of much Rain riseth but little but as often as the south-wind beats long upon it it swells and overflows the grounds adjoining extremely This River is a very streight and broad river to sea-ward so that what rain falls hath an easie and quick passage out But if the South-wind blow long the River must needs swell much because no wind hath so much power on the Irish seas as that because it blows right in upon it between the coasts of Wales and Ireland and must needs swell and roll it so much the more for that it brings the sea still in which having not so free a passage quite through by reason of the narrow streight between Scotland and the North of Ireland still returns back where it meets with a fresh supply of Waters continually coming in Now the Irish sea thus swelling will have easie and ready admission into a streight River In the low places on
frozen snow that never were melted So that now after so many years lapse it cannot be I think but that the Diameter of the earth from pole to pole from the top of the snow at one end of the earth to the top of it at the other end is much longer then in any part under the Equator though at the Creation it were as I believe made spherical And so I suppose in longer process of time it will grow more oblong And as it so increaseth in length so I believe the sea will decrease in depth tho gh both very insensibly because snow must consist of something and that something can be nothing but a watry vapour condensed and congealed c. And this watry vapour must be drawn out of the sea or out of that part of the earth which once sooner or later received it from the sea And this snow being thrown down at the Poles and not melting that so it may return from whence it came and re-fil that which is emptied must needs caufe a decrease in the sea Now that which tempts me to embrace this Paradox the more affectionately is for that it serves excellently well to solve a great doubt which troubled Tycho and Keppler about centrel Eclipses of the Moon that happen near the Equator such as that was which Tycho observed in the year 1588. and that which Keppler observed in the yeare 1624. concerning which hee speaks to this purpose Notandum est hanc Lunae Eclipsin instar illius quam Tycho anno 1588. observavit totalem proximam centrali egregie calculum fefellisse Nam non solum mora totius Lunae in tenebris brevis fuit sed duratio reliqua multo magis Perinde quasi Tellus Elliptica esset dimetientem breviorem habens sub AEquatore longiorem à Polo uno ad alterum that is We must note that this Eclipse of the Moon viz. that on the 26. of September stylo Novo 1624. like that which Tycho observed in the year 1588. being a total and almost centrel one did notoriously deceive my calculation for not onely the duration of the total obscurity was short but also the rest of the duration before and after the total obscurity much shorter as if saith he the Earth were Elliptical having a shorter Diameter under the Equator then from one Pole to another And yet I am not so devoted to my own fancies but that one solid reason shall prevail with me to abandon the dearest of them though for the present I see abundance of reason for what I think In some places of this shire are bred certain Shel-fish which being produced saith my Author by an heavenly dew bring forth Pearls In the Pool called Lin-paris there is as it is reported a kind of fish called Torcoch having a red belly which is no where else to be seen but here It is said also that on the high hills of this shire are two Meres one of which produceth fish that have but one eye and in the other is a moveable and floting Island which as soon as a man treads on it presently flotes a great way off But Speed thinks they are both but fables Snowdon Hills saith Cambden although they have snow always lying on them yet are exceeding rank with grass insomuch that they are become a Proverb among the Welsh and it is certain that there are pools and standing waters upon the very tops of these Mountains and they are so coated with that snowy crust that lyes on them that if a man do but lightly set his foot any where on the top of the Mountains he shal perceive the earth to stir the length of a stones cast from him which I suppose might occasion the fable of the Floting Island mentioned but now Anglesey IN diverse places saith Hugh Lloyd in the low grounds and Champion fields of this Island the Inhabitants do every day find and dig out of the earth the bodies of huge Trees with their Roots and Firre-Trees of a wonderful bigness and length Which Trees he thinks were such as were cut down by the Romans in theirtime because Tacitus saith the Romans when they had conquered this Island caused all their Woods to be cut down and utterly destroyed But if some be found with their roots on I cannot think so but rather impute thesespoils made on Maritime places to the want of industry and husbandry in the first ages of the world This Island was in times past full of Woods and Timber but instead of that now it yeeldeth plenty of Corn Sheep and Cattel The air is reasonable healthful save onely a little aguish at some time and in some places by reason of the fogs that rise from the sea It yeildeth also great store of Mil-stones and Grind-stones and in some places is found an Aluminous earth of which they may make Alume and Copperas but it must be with some cost and labour This Island saith Hugh Lloyd yeilds every year such plenty of wheat that they call it the Mother of Wales Denbighshire THe air of this shire is cold but very wholsome and the snow lyes long on the hils for it is a hilly Countrey the high hils resembling the battlement of Walls on the tops of which when vapors rise in the morning in Summer time it foreshews a fair day to follow The highest hil in the shire called Moilenlly hath a spring of clear water on the top of it The people living in the Vale saith Cambden are very healthful their heads sound and firm their eye-sight never dim and their age very lasting and chearful The little Riveret called Alen runs under ground once or twice Near the little Town Moinglath is plenty of Lead In the west part of the shire where the ground is barren they pare away the surface of the earth into turfs with a broad spade and burn them and lay the ashes of them upon those grounds which enriches them much This way of enriching Land was used anciently by the Romans and spoken of both by Virgil and Horace In the year 1574 February the 26. were great Earthquakes which did many people much hurt both within doors and without in York Worcester Hereford Gloucester Bristol and other places adjacent This shaking of the earth made the Bell in the Shire-Hall of Denbigh to toll twice but did no other harm at all thereabouts Flintshire THe air of this shire is healthfull without any Fogs or Fenny vapours saving that somtimes there riseth from the Sea and the River Dee certain thick and smoky mists which yet hurt not at all for the people here are very aged and healthfull The air is colder here then in Cheshire because it is encompassed with the Sea and the River so that the Northwinds being carried long upon the waters blow the colder whence it is that snow lyes very long here upon the hills The Country affordeth great plenty of Cattle but they are but small Millstone is digged in
tops of these hills stones have been found like Sea-winkles Cockles and other fish Which saith Cambden are either naturall or else are the reliques of Noahs flood petrified Orosius speaks as much of Oysters of stone found upon hills far from the Sea which have been eaten in hollow with the water In all likelyhood these stone-fishes are of the same kind with ours in Glocestershire Plenty of Lead-stones in Wentsedale The River Ure is full of Creafishes but the breed was brought thither out of the South parts of England by Sir Christopher Medcalfe It may be from Newbury in Barkeshire where there are the like plenty The River Swale is a very swift River Mask in this shire is full of Lead Ore There is a place in this shire called St. Wilfrids Needle being a passage so narrow that one of a mean bulk can but just creep through it The story goes of it that it easily lets chast women through but holds fast those that have plaid false However the thing may seem a Fable at first sight yet if the women that have plaid false be with child it may be true without wonder The Bishoprick of Durham THe air of this County is sharp and piercing and would be more but that the vapours of the Sea do help to dissolve the ice and snow The Eastern part of it is the richest the South is moorish and the West all Rocky without grass or grain onely it feeds Cattle and is well stored with Coal as indeed the whole County is being the greatest in England for great Coals And the Coals grow so near the surface of the earth that the Cart wheels turn them up in the trod-ways In the West part of this County are Iron Mines Query whether all Mines be not in a hilly Country The East part of the County yields a great plenty of Coale and yet where it hath plenty of it it is likewise fruitfull and good land At Egleston is a Marble quarry Near Darlington whose waters are warm hot saith Cambden and by an Antiperistasis or reverberation of the cold air are three pits wonderfull deep called Hell kettles These are thought to come of an earthquake that happened Anno 1179. For on Christmas day say our Chronicles at Oxenhall which is this place the ground heaved up alost like a Tower and so continued all that day as it were immovable till evening and then fell in with a very horrible noise and the earth swallowed it up and made in the same place three deep pits It is reported that Bishop Tunstall put a Goose into one of those pits having first given her a mark and the same Goose was found in the River Tees so that it seems these Kettles have passages under ground Within the River Weere at Butterby near Durham in Summer time there issues a salt reddish water from the sides of certain stones at the ebbe low water which with the Sun waxes white growing thick beeoms a salt which the people thereabouts alwayes use Cambden saith further that if you pour water upon these stones and temper it a little with them it will suck in a saltish quality Lancashire THe air of this County is thin and piercing not troubled with gross mists or fogs And the people are very comly healthfull and long lived and not subject to strange diseases The soile is not very fruitfull yet it breeds great number of Cattle that are of huge proportion and have goodly heads and large spread horns Here is also fish and fowle on the Sea coasts in good plenty and in other places of the shire the like store of Coals and a competent increase of flax Where the ground is plain it is good for wheat and barley that which lyes at the bottome of hils is better for oats Along the Sea side in many places lye heaps of Sand upon which the people pour water till it contract a saltish humour from the sand and thus they boile with turfs till it become white salt This shire in divers places suffereth much by the flowing fury of the Sea as in Fourness much of which the Sea hath eaten away by little and little The cause is plain For who can expect less where a shore full of quicksands as this is is washed and beaten upon by a Sea hardly ever quiet such as every one knows the Irish Sea is unless it be sometimes in Summer Not far from Fourness Felles lyes the greatest standing Water of England called Winander Meere which is wonderfull deep and ten miles over and all paved as it were in the bottome There are many such places in England that are naturally paved When I went to Keynsham by Bristol to search for the snake-stones there I found the Lane where they are as it were all paved with broad hard stones and the fnakes lying upon the middle of the surface of the stones We have also in some places of Kent such naturall pavements And such I take stone-streets by Hithe to be if it were not a work of the Romans This Winander Meere breeds a kind of fish called a Chare which is no where else to be found The Mosses in this shire are very unwholesome places to live in If the upper coat of this mossie earth be pared away it yields fat turfes for fewel and sometimes trees that have lien long under ground as it is thought unless they grew there which is unlikely In diverse places also these mosses underneath afford abundance of Marle to enrich land with On the banks of the River Irwell is a kind of reddish stone About Manchester are quarries of very good stone By Chatmoss in this shire is a low mossey ground very large a great part of which saith Cambden not long ago the Brooks swelling high carried quite away with them whereby the Rivers were corrupted and a number of fresh fish perished In which place now lyes a low vale watered with a little Brook where trees have been digged up lying along which are supposed by some to have come thus The channels of the Brooks being not scoured the Brooks have risen and made all the land moorish that lay lower then others Whereby the roots of the trees being loosened by reason of the bogginess of the ground or by the water finding a passage under ground the trees have either by their own weight or by some storm being blown down and so sunk into that soft earth and been swallowed up For it is observable that trees are no where digged out of the earth but where the earth is boggy And even upon hils such moorish and moist grounds are commonly found The wood of these trees burns very bright and clear like torchwood which perhaps is by reason of the Bitumenous earth in which they have been so long so that some think them to be Firre Trees but it is not so saith Cambden Such mighty trees are often found in Holland which are thought to be undermined by the waves working into
the shire or by winds driven forward and brought to those lower places where they settled and sunk But Querie saith Cambden whether they be not subterraneous Trees growing under ground as well as plants and other creatures At Ferneby the people use Turfs for fire and candle both And when they dig them they find under them a certain dead blackish water upon which swimms a kind of fat oily matter and in it there are little flshes which the diggers take And just in the same manner saith Cambden fishes are digged out of the earth at Heraclea and Tios in Pontus But that which is much stranger is that in Paphlagonia many and those very good fishes are gotten by digging in places nothing waterish but saith he this is a secret in nature On the very top of Pendle-hill grows a peculiar plant called Cloudesberry as though it came out of the clouds This hill saith Cambden lately did the country much harm near it by reason of an extraordinary deal of water gushing out of it It is also famous for an infallible signe of rain whensoever the top of it is covered with a mist. There are three great hills here not far distant asunder seeming to be as high as the clouds which are Ingleborrow Penigent and this Pendle In the River Lune near Cockersand Abbey is great store of Salmon That fish delighting and thriving best in shallow sandy and clear Rivers Cumberland THis County like the rest of the rough Northern Countries hath sharp piercing aire which would be worse if the high Hils in the North did not break of the storms and falling Snow The soil is fertile for the most part both for Corn and Cattel and the Maritime places are wel furnished with Fish and Fowl and the Rivers breed a kind of Musck that beareth Pearl And Speed tels us that in the mouth of the River Jet as they lye gaping and sucking in the dew that falls the people gather them and sel them In this County are many Mines of Copper especially at Keswick and Newland where likewise the Black-Lead is found Formerly there were Veins of Gold and Silver in the Copper-Mines about Newland At Salkelds upon the River Eden is a Trophee of Victory called by the Countrey people Long Meg and her Daughters They are 77 stones each of them ten foot high above ground and one amongst the rest is fifteen foot high Skiddaw-Hill riseth up with two mighty high Heads like Parnassus and beholds Scruffel Hill in Annandale within Scotland And according as mists rise or fall upon these heads the people thereby prognosticate of the change of weather singing this Rime If Skiddaw have a Cap Scruffel wots full well of that There are two other exeeeding high Hills in this shire called Lauvellin and Casticand The sea as is before said hath eaten a great part of the Land away upon the shores of these Western shires There are on the shore of this shire Trees discovered somtimes by the Winds at low water which are else covered over with Sand. And it is reported by the people dwelling thereabouts that they dig up trees without boughs out of the ground in the mossie places of the shire and that by the direction of the dew in Summer for they observe that the dew never stands upon that ground under which they lye The earth and stones at Penrith are of a reddish colour Some Empirick Chirurgions of Scotland take their journey to the Picts Wall every year in the beginning of Summer to gather vulnerary Plants which they say grow plentifully there and are very effectual being sowen and planted by the Romans for Chirurgical uses Northumberland THe air of this shire also is sharp and piercing of itsself but the Germane Ocean doth somewhat abate the edge of it and helps to dissolve the Ice and Snow The soil is rough hard and barren and it should seem the inhabitants are long lived for one Mr. Macklain a Scotch man Parson of Lesbury who died about the year 1659. did in the year 1657. two years before renew his youth so that though for 40. years before he could not read without Spectacles being 116. years of age he would then read the smallest print without them He had his hair which before he had lost came again like a childs c. Which puts me in mind of an aged Dean who had the like renovation of age and when he dyed he had this Epitaph bestowed by some barbarous pen upon his Tomb Hic jacet edentulus Canus atque Decanus Rursum dentescit nigrescit hic requiescit There are Hills hard by North Tine so boggy and standing with Water on the top that no Horseman is able to ride over them And yet there are great heaps of stones cast up together upon them which it may be is the mark of some victory By Bywell Castle is great store of Salmons As indeed there is in most of the Rivers in the North of England and in Scotland Coquet Isle hath a Vein of Sea-Cole in it The Isle of MAN Hath cold and sharp air It yeilds much Hemp and Flax. The Cattel and Sheepe are smaller then ours in England being much like those in Ireland which are but small neither nor have their Cattel so fair a head as ours Many Trees are found and digged out of the earth in this Island And they have here a clammy turf which they burn for their fewel In the Calf of Man are abundance of Puffins as also Bernacles which the people there say are bred of rotten wood The soil of the Isle of Man saith H. Lloyd is reasonable fertile both for Corn and Grass and yeilds good plenty of Barley Wheat and Rye but especially of Oats and feeds great store of Cattel and Sheep yet the Land is more waste and barren then that of Anglesey and the people that are born and bred here are weaker and less fit for the Wars Westmorland THe air here is sharp and piercing not subject to gross sogs and vapours by reason of which the people are free from strange and infectious Diseases being very healthful and living generally to great ages The soil is moorish and barren for the most part yet the Southern part is is not so bad as the rest Near the River Loder is a spring that ebbs and flows many times in a day And in the same place there are huge stones like Pyramids some of them are nine foot high and fourteen foot thick pitched directly in a row for a mile together In the River Can near Kendale are two Catarrhacts or Water-falls where the waters descend with a great fall and mighty noise And when that which standeth North from the Neighbour living between them sounds clearer and loude then the other they certainly look for fair weather to follow but when that on the south side doth so they expect fogs and showers of rain By Kirkby Lonsdale are many deep and hollow places like Caves In ancient time