Among The Many Private Inscriptions In This Church, We Found One
Made By Dr. Over, Once An Eminent Physician In
This city, on a
mother and child, who, being his patients, died together and were
buried in the same grave,
And which intimate that one died of a
fever, and the other of a dropsy:
"Surrepuit natum Febris, matrem abstulit Hydrops,
Igne Prior Fatis, Altera cepit Aqua."
As the city itself stands in a vale on the bank, and at the
conjunction of two small rivers, so the country rising every way,
but just as the course of the water keeps the valley open, you must
necessarily, as you go out of the gates, go uphill every wry; but
when once ascended, you come to the most charming plains and most
pleasant country of that kind in England; which continues with very
small intersections of rivers and valleys for above fifty miles, as
shall appear in the sequel of this journey.
At the west gate of this city was anciently a castle, known to be
so by the ruins more than by any extraordinary notice taken of it
in history. What they say of it, that the Saxon kings kept their
court here, is doubtful, and must be meant of the West Saxons only.
And as to the tale of King Arthur's Round Table, which they pretend
was kept here for him and his two dozen of knights (which table
hangs up still, as a piece of antiquity to the tune of twelve
hundred years, and has, as they pretend, the names of the said
knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man can read), all
this story I see so little ground to give the least credit to that
I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a
fib.
Where this castle stood, or whatever else it was (for some say
there was no castle there), the late King Charles II. marked out a
very noble design, which, had he lived, would certainly have made
that part of the country the Newmarket of the ages to come; for the
country hereabout far excels that of Newmarket Heath for all kinds
of sport and diversion fit for a prince, nobody can dispute. And
as the design included a noble palace (sufficient, like Windsor,
for a summer residence of the whole court), it would certainly have
diverted the king from his cursory journeys to Newmarket.
The plan of this house has received several alterations, and as it
is never like to be finished, it is scarce worth recording the
variety. The building is begun, and the front next the city
carried up to the roof and covered, but the remainder is not begun.
There was a street of houses designed from the gate of the palace
down to the town, but it was never begun to be built; the park
marked out was exceeding large, near ten miles in circumference,
and ended west upon the open Downs, in view of the town of
Stockbridge.
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