as we generally say of improbable news, it wants confirmation. The
true name of the town is Kelvedon, and has been so for many hundred
years. Neither does Mr. Camden, or any other writer I meet with
worth naming, insist on this piece of empty tradition. The town is
commonly called Keldon.

Colchester is an ancient corporation. The town is large, very
populous, the streets fair and beautiful, and though it may not
said to be finely built, yet there are abundance of very good and
well-built houses in it. It still mourns in the ruins of a civil
war; during which, or rather after the heat of the war was over, it
suffered a severe siege, which, the garrison making a resolute
defence, was turned into a blockade, in which the garrison and
inhabitants also suffered the utmost extremity of hunger, and were
at last obliged to surrender at discretion, when their two chief
officers, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, were shot to
death under the castle wall. The inhabitants had a tradition that
no grass would grow upon the spot where the blood of those two
gallant gentlemen was spilt, and they showed the place bare of
grass for many years; but whether for this reason I will not
affirm. The story is now dropped, and the grass, I suppose, grows
there, as in other places.

However, the battered walls, the breaches in the turrets, and the
ruined churches, still remain, except that the church of St. Mary
(where they had the royal fort) is rebuilt; but the steeple, which
was two-thirds battered down, because the besieged had a large
culverin upon it that did much execution, remains still in that
condition.