Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722




I began my travels where I purpose to end them, viz., at the City
of London, and therefore my account of the city itself will come
last, that is to say, at the latter end of my southern progress;
and as in the course of this journey I shall have many occasions to
call it a circuit, if not a circle, so I chose to give it the title
of circuits in the plural, because I do not pretend to have
travelled it all in one journey, but in many, and some of them many
times over; the better to inform myself of everything I could find
worth taking notice of.

I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the more capable
of giving a full account of things, by how much the more
deliberation I have taken in the view of them, and by how much the
oftener I have had opportunity to see them.

I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took
what I think I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter
of it; for I went down by the coast of the Thames through the
Marshes or Hundreds on the south side of the county of Essex, till
I came to Malden, Colchester, and Harwich, thence continuing on the
coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth; thence round by the edge of the sea,
on the north and west side of Norfolk, to Lynn, Wisbech, and the
Wash; thence back again, on the north side of Suffolk and Essex, to
the west, ending it in Middlesex, near the place where I began it,
reserving the middle or centre of the several counties to some