Part 10

_Auxiliis olim stetit alma Coventria regum Dum fortuna fuit. Magnos colit hinc Edoardos Henricosque suos, urbs non ingrata patronos. Jamque adeo afflictis crescit spes altera rebus Elizabetha tuis princeps mitissima sceptris. Lætior illuxit nullo pax rege Britannis. Ergo age diva tuis sis fœlix civibus usque, Exuperans patrias & avitas æmula laudes._

_Princeps ille niger (niveis cui vertice pennis Crista minax, victi regis cæsique Bohæmi Exuviis) heros Edoardus magnus in armis, Hic sedem posuit. Sic dicta est principis aula. Hoc authore fuit libertas civibus aucta, Muneribusque ornata suis, res publica crevit. Hinc depicta, vides, passim sua penna per urbem Testatur magni monumentum & pignus amoris._

_Labentes fatis (quid enim perdurat in ævum?) Fortunas urbis tandem miseratus agrorum Extendit fines, Northumbrius ille Johannes. Cumque fuit bello dux invictissimus, armis In mediis coluit pacis, vir providus, artes; Exemploque suum vocat ad pia facta Robertum._

_Non tantum meruit Leofricus Cestrius olim Nec conjux Godiva, pii dux fœmina facti. Godiva ab turpi quæ lege coacta mariti Fertur equo, diffusa comas nudata per urbem. Asseruitque suos, culpent utcunque minores! Vicit amor patriæ libertatisque cupido: Quantum hodie patrem referens Leicestrius heros Retro sublapsam qui nostram restituit rem, Sustinet in pejus ruituram urbisque salutem. I modo quo virtus te fert, sic itur ad astra. Et quibus insistis fœlix, procede paternis Auspiciis, maneatque tuos hæc cura nepotes._

Holbech, May 1712.

ITER CIMBRICUM. III.

——_quid virtus & quid sapientia possit Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem. Qui domitor Trojæ, multorum providus urbes Et mores hominum inspexit_—— +Hor.+

_To_ RICHARD MYDDLETON MASSEY _of_ Wisbech, _M. D._

To you of right I inscribe this journey, to which your company and my inclination to see somewhat of the world allured me. I had conceived great notions of the old Britons betimes, and longed to hear at least a language spoke soon after the deluge; and I then prided myself as much as Cæsar formerly in making this small inroad into their country. I willingly take this occasion of recognizing how I ought to esteem it a happiness, that you chanced to be seated in a place so near that of my nativity, and presented to me a subject of imitation, in all the commendable qualifications that may conduce to the felicity and ornament of life. Your deep insight into the _materia medica_, the theory and practice of physic, your great knowledge of antiquities, natural history, and all polite learning, and the excellence of your hand in designing, were as so many spurs to me in my young years, when we are most apt at imitation: and that the latter exercise of the pen is of importance to all the others, is too notorious, and universally allowed by all, to need any solemn proof. Who sees not that the defeats and confusion in anatomy and botany, and every part of philosophy, is owing to the want of drawing? when the innumerable labours of so many ages are either lost to posterity, or imperfectly transmitted, for that reason. How well does this range and distinguish ideas, and imprint them in one’s own mind, as well as make them known to others? It is not to be disputed but a person that understands it, sees much farther into things than others: the beauties of art and nature are open to him. Indeed every body is pleased with perfection and beauty, though they know not why: as suppose that of a fine statue, they are hugely delighted with it, though they understand not that it is owing to the proper disposition and contrast of the limbs, to the attitude, the grace of the posture, the expression of the action, the light and shade, and a thousand other requisites, as well as the particular delicacy and outline of the parts and members: and these things are only to be learnt and gathered from Nature’s self, from copying and observing it; for she is the grand exemplar of all fine strokes in drawing; as Aristotle formed his Art of Poetry from the great genius of Homer, and he from the force of Nature.

[Sidenote: +Grantham.+]

Grantham was certainly a Roman town. Burton in his Commentaries on Antoninus’s Itinerary relates, that a great stone trough, covered with a stone, was dug up there, full of Roman coins, p. 216.[38] The street that runs on the east of the church is called Castle-street: between it and the river have been dug up foundations of a castle, as they say.[39] I have a piece of glass with enamel upon it, ground with an engine; which is curious, and I take it for Roman: it was found in the Grange garden. Here is a spacious church and fine spire, much noted: it is a hundred yards high, equalled by another in this county, Louth, besides the tower of Boston: under the south wall of this church are two tomb-stones, said to be of the founders; one in old French, the date only legible, 1362; the other, *hic jacent ricard de calceby et margareta vx ejus m ccclxii*. On a stone in a wall in Church-lane this inscription (the _orate pro anima_ seems to have been cut out by order of some zealot) *Iohis Goldsmyth mercatoris de Grantham*, a coat of arms, quarterly; in the sinister upper quarter a mullet. There were many religious houses here, some reliques of them left: in one just by the market-place is a very pretty little chapel, or oratory, adorned with imagery. The Angel inn was once a commandery. Here is a good free-school, erected by Richard Fox bishop of Winchester, where Sir Isaac Newton received the first principles of literature, under the famous William Walker then school-master.[40] Belvoir, the seat of the dukes of Rutland, stands on a high hill with a very fine prospect: you may see Nottingham castle and Lincoln minster, and all around you, below, many towns and lordships the demesnes of this noble family. Here is a perfect pattern of the true old English hospitality. In the fine gallery are many ancient and modern family pictures and others; the original one of king Charles I. as he sat at his trial. This place was the possession of Robert de Totney,[41] a great man who came in with William the Conqueror: he built a priory near it. I imagine originally here was a Roman camp; for coins have been found about it.[42] Upon the edge of Lincolnshire we visited the tombs of the duke of Rutland’s family at Bottesworth, which are worth seeing.

[Sidenote: +Nottingham.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXXIX.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XXXVIII.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XIV.]

Nottingham we arrived at after crossing the Roman road called Foss: it is a pleasant and beautiful town. They have a great manufacture here for stockings, which they weave in looms from the invention of a neighbouring clergyman. Their ale is highly valued for softness and pleasant taste: the cellars in the town are hewn out of the rock two or three story deep, to fourscore steps sometimes. The castle is a goodly building on a high perpendicular rock; seems to have been modelled after some of Inigo Jones’s draughts: many good pictures there: it commands a vast prospect. The south side of the rock is altogether inaccessible: a winding stair-case along it to the bottom, which they call Mortimer’s hole: there are vast subterraneous grottos cut underneath. St. Mary’s church is a fine old lightsome building, with a good ring of eight bells. We saw Mr. Hurst’s gardens, late Pierpoint’s, which are very pretty; in the middle a copy of the Dalmatian slave in metal. One may easily guess Nottingham to have been an ancient town of the Britons: as soon as they had proper tools they fell to work upon the rocks, which every where offer themselves so commodiously to make houses in; and I doubt not that here was a considerable collection of colonies of this sort: that which I have described in Plate 39. will give us an idea of them; it is in the duke of Newcastle’s park. What is visible at present is not of so old a date as their time; yet I see no doubt but that it is formed upon theirs: this is a ledge of perpendicular rock hewn out into a church, houses, chambers, dove-houses, &c. The church is like those in the rocks at Bethlehem and other places in the Holy Land: the altar is natural rock, and there has been painting upon the wall; a steeple, I suppose, where a bell hung, and regular pillars. The river here winding about makes a fortification to it; for it comes to both ends of the cliff, leaving a plain before the middle. The way to it was by gates cut out of the rock, and with oblique entrance for more safety. Without is a plain with three niches, which I fancy their place of judicature, or the like: there is regularity in it, and seems to resemble that square called the Temple in the Pictish castle, Plate 38. in Scotland. The wild _cherry-tree_ grows upon this place, and many curious plants, _liver-worts_, _lychnis sylvester_. 9. _clus. ruta muraria_, _rosa pimpinellæ folio odorata_, _capillus veneris_, _umbilicus veneris_. Between this and the castle is an hermitage of like workmanship. The butchers shambles is an old edifice built for a granary. Clifton near here is a good seat, with pretty gardens and a noble prospect: in the church are many old brasses of the family of this name. Three miles from Nottingham is Woolaton hall, the seat of my lord Middleton; which is a good piece of old building: there is a pretty summer-house panelled and cieled with looking-glass, which produces a pleasant effect: underneath is a water-house with grotesque work of shells, &c. A little beyond, in the road, upon the brow of the hill, is a high rugged piece of rock, called Hemlock-stone, seen at a good distance: probably it is the remains of a quarry dug from around it. Beyond this we entered Derbyshire. There are some few ruins of Dale abbey seated in a valley, and the east end of the choir over-grown with ivy: the mullions of the windows are knocked out (I suppose for sake of the iron:) it is overlooked by a near and high hill covered with oaks. In the ascent, out of the rock is cut a cell, or little oratory, called the Hermitage: on one side the door and windows, at the east end, a square altar and a step up to it of the same quarry, little niches cut in the wall, and a bench to sit on all round.

[Sidenote: +Derby.+]

Derby has five churches; the tower of one is very fine. The new-erected silk manufacture is a remarkable curiosity: the house is of a vast bulk, five or six stories high: the whole furniture is one machine turned by a single water-wheel, which communicates its power through the whole, and actuates no less than 97–746 several wheels or motions, and still employs three or four hundred hands to over-look and act in concert with it. Mr. Loom the owner brought the design of it from Italy.[43] The waters that run here, whether from the lead mines or coal, are apt to cause the _bronchocele_ in the fair sex.

[Sidenote: +Burton.+]

Beyond Derby, along the Ricning way is Burton upon the Trent, where is a bridge of thirty-seven arches. Here was an old abbey: they are pulling down the ruins to build a new church.

[Sidenote: +Derventio.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXXXVI.]

A mile below Derby, upon the river Derwent, stood the old Roman city Derventio, now called Little Chester. I traced the track of the wall quite round, and in some places saw under ground the foundation of it in the pastures, and some vaults along the side of it: they dig it up daily to mend the ways with. Mr. Lord’s cellar is built on one side of the wall three yards thick: it is of a square form, standing between the Roman way called the Ricning street and the river. Within the walls are foundations of houses in all the pastures; and in the fields round the castle (as they call it) you may see the tracks of the streets laid with gravel: in a dry summer the grass over them is very bare. Divers wells are found, some still remaining, square, curbed with good stone. Brass, silver, and gold Roman coins have been found in great abundance; earthen pipes, aqueducts, and all kinds of antiquities. Towards the river they have dug up human bones, brass rings, and the like. There was a bridge over the river, for it was too deep and rapid for a ford: they can feel the foundations of it with a staff. In Mr. Hodgkin’s cellar a stag’s head with horns was dug up; probably a temple thereabouts: a square well in his garden three foot and a half one way, and four another.

[Sidenote: +Ricning-way.+]

A little further northward upon the Ricning street,[44] which seems to take its name from the Saxon _rige_, _dorsum_, is Horreston castle, whose ruins on a hoary rock are nearly obliterated; and out of it they cut great quantities of rubstones to whet scythes withal. We are now got into the very Peak of Derbyshire, the British Alps, where the odd prospects afford some entertainment to a traveller, and relieve the fatigue of so tedious a road. Now you pass over barren moors, in perpetual danger of slipping into coal-pits and lead-mines; or ride for miles together, on the edge of a steep hill, on solid slippery rock or loose stones, with a valley underneath, where you can scarce discover the bottom with your eye; which brought into my mind that beautiful verse in Virgil,

_Saxa per & scopulos & depressas convalles._

Instead of trees and hedges, they fence in their poor meadow or arable with walls of loose stones picked up from beneath their feet. The extended sides of the mountains are generally powdered over as it were with rocks, streams of water dribbling down every where; and now bolder cataracts diversify the romantic scene.

At the smelting-mills they melt down the lead ore, and run it into a mould, whence it becomes pigs as they call it: the bellows continually are kept in motion by running water. We were complemented to be let down two hundred yards deep into the mines, if we pleased. We came to a monstrous parcel of gigantic rocks, seemingly piled one a-top of another as in the wars of the gods, called the Torr: there were a few inhabitants at bottom, in little cottages, who durst trust themselves under so ruinous a shelter: it was fitly represented by those verses of the poet,

_Stabat acuta silex, præcisis undique saxis, Speluncæ dorso insurgens, altissima visu. Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum!_ +Virg.+ viii. Æn.

I took the pains to clamber on hands and knees almost to the top, and entered another hermit’s cell, who had a mind, if possible, to get quite out of the world: it is hewn in the rock, with a most dreary prospect before it: on one end is a crucifix and a little niche, where I suppose the mistaken zeal of the starved anchorite placed his saint, or such trinket. Over-against it, about half a mile off, is another such cliff; but by the care of a gentleman that lives underneath (Mr. Ashe) it is reduced into a more agreeable form: there is an easy ascent up to it by steps hewn out of the rock, and abundance of alcoves, grots, summer-houses, cellars, pinacles, dials, balustrades, urns, &c. all of the same materials: earth is carried to the top, and fine grassy walks with greens planted along them, upon this hanging terrace, whence you have a free view over many a craggy mountain. I was highly pleased with so elegant a composure, where Art and industry had so well played its part against rugged Nature.

[Sidenote: +Chatsworth.+]

We went through Wirksworth, and over the rapid Derwent, whilst on a sudden (like the advantageous change of a scene) we were surprised at the sight of Chatsworth, the famous seat of the duke of Devonshire, deservedly reckoned one of the wonders of the Peak, as remarkable for its situation in so wild a place as its curious fabric and ornaments. The river here for a while puts on a smooth aspect, and glides gently by, as unwilling to leave so glorious a place: between it and the house is a fine venerable walk of trees, retaining the name of that great philosopher Hobbes, who studied frequently under its shade. A noble piece of iron-work gates and balusters exposes the front of the house and court, terminated at the corners next the road with two large stone pedestals of Attic work, curiously adorned with trophies of war, and utensils of all the sciences, cut in _basso relievo_. This face of the building is Ionic, the whole being a square of a single order, but every side of a different model: a court in the middle, with a piazza of Doric columns of one stone each overlaid with prodigious architraves. The stone is of an excellent sort, veined like marble, hewn out of the neighbouring quarries, and tumbled down the adjacent hill: it is introduced into the work in very large sizes, finely jointed. In the anti-room to the hall are flat stones, of fourteen foot square, laid upon the heads of four pillars, and so throughout: in the hall stairs the landing or resting steps of the same dimension: the doors, chimneys, window-cases, stairs, &c. of marble; the sashes very large, gilt; the squares two foot broad: the cielings and walls of all the apartments charged with rare painting of Varrio and other famous hands: the bath-room all of marble curiously wrought. The chapel is a most ravishing place: the altar-end and floor marble, the seats and gallery cedar, the rest of the wall and cieling painted. The gardens abound with green-houses, summer-houses, walks, wildernesses, orangeries, with all the furniture of statues, urns, greens, &c. with canals, basons and water-works of various forms and contrivance, sea-horses, drakes, dolphins, and other fountains that throw up the water: an artificial willow-tree of copper spouts and drops water from every leaf: a wonderful cascade, where, from a neat house of stone like a temple, out of the mouths of beasts, pipes, urns, &c. a whole river descends the slope of a hill, a quarter of a mile in length, over steps, with a terrible noise and broken appearance, till it is lost under ground. Beyond the garden, upon the hills, is a park, and that overlooked by a very high and rocky mountain: here are some statues and other antiquities.

[Sidenote: +Buxton.+]

Hence we went by Bakewel, and left Haddon-house belonging to the duke of Rutland on our left hand, in a pleasant and fruitful valley. We travelled ten miles over a perfect desert to Buxton, encompassed with waste and boggy mountains and naked cliffs: the tops of the hills hereabouts are quagmires, or springs, furnishing numerous rivers running hence all manner of ways. Nature seems to have thrown these precipicious heights into the middle of the island on purpose for her limbeck, to distil the liquid sources of springs by some unknown power. The valleys are the firmest ground, made of the gritty washings of the mountains: we were every moment diverted with the appearance of curious plants, but no tree to be seen. At Buxton are the admirable warm springs, which invite numbers of strangers yearly, especially from the northern countries. The duke of Devonshire has built a large and convenient house for their reception: the bath-room is arched over head, and the whole made handsome, convenient, and delightful. This collection of tepid waters, exceeding clear, will receive twenty people at a time to walk and swim in: the temper thereof, equal to new milk, or that of one’s own blood, procures a moderate perspiration: its effect is remarkable for giving that gentle relaxation of the solids, which takes off the weariness and fatigue of a journey, and refreshes immediately: it is useful physically in many cases, and may be indulged more than the hot baths of Somersetshire, which frequently do harm for that reason, through an imprudent use. Such a one as this was imitated by the sumptuous bagnios of the Roman emperors. Sir Tho. Delves, who received a cure here, gave the pump and a pretty stone alcove over the drinking-spring in the yard: the water may be raised to what height you please. Philosophers have long sought for a solution of the cause of these hot springs: the chymists know many mixtures will produce a flame and effervescence, particularly steel filings and sulphur, when water is poured thereon; but that these could continue the same course and quantity of water, and this regular heat, through all ages and seasons, is worthy of admiration. Indulgent Nature indeed has made some amends to the inhabitants of this barren region by this inestimable gift. We found in one of the rooms these verses, wrote upon the wall by a physician that formerly frequented the place:

_Corpore debilior Grani se proluit undis, Quærit aquas Aponi, quem febris atra necat. Ut penitus renem purget cur Psaulia tanti, Vel quæ Lucinæ gaudia, Calderiæ? Sola mihi Buxtona placet, Buxtona Britannis Undæ Grani, Aponus, Psaulia, Calderiæ._

About half a mile off is that stupendous cavern called Pool’s Hole, under a great mountain: the entrance at the foot thereof is very low and narrow, so that you must stoop to get in: but immediately it dilates into a wide and lofty concavity, which reaches above a quarter of a mile end-wise and farther, as they tell us: some old women with lighted candles are guides in this Cimmerian obscurity: water drops from the roof every where, and incrusts all the stones with long crystals and fluors: whence a thousand imaginary figures are shown you, by the name of lions, fonts, lanterns, organs, flitch of bacon, &c. At length you come to the Queen of Scots pillar, as a _terminus_ of most people’s curiosity. A stream of water runs along the middle, among the fallen rocks, with a hideous noise, re-echoed from all sides of the horrid concave: on the left hand is a sort of chamber, where they say Pool, a famous robber, lived. We may very well apply these verses to the place:

_At specus & Caci detecta apparuit ingens Regia, & umbrosæ penitus patuere cavernæ: Non secus ac si qua penitus vi terræ dehiscens Infernas reseret sedes & regna recludat Pallida, diis invisa, superque immane barathrum Cernatur——_ +Virg.+ Æn. viii.

Within appears old Pool’s tremendous cave, With glimmering lights redoubled horror shown; Yawning, as earth by strong convulsions torn Opens the caverns of the Stygian king Dire, hateful to the gods, and the black pit Discloses wide——