In A Word,
Their Reputation Seems Here To Be Better Kept, Guarded By Better
Conduct, And Managed With More Prudence;
And yet the Dorsetshire
ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about
streets, or hide
Themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the
whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of
behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I
nowhere see better in all my observation through the whole isle of
Britain. In this little interval also I visited some of the
biggest towns in the north-west part of this county, as Blandford--
a town on the River Stour in the road between Salisbury and
Dorchester--a handsome well-built town, but chiefly famous for
making the finest bone-lace in England, and where they showed me
some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be
had. But it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in
that county, such as no part of England can equal.
From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly called Strabridge.
The town and the country around is employed in the manufacture of
stockings, and which was once famous for making the finest, best,
and highest-prize knit stocking in England; but that trade now is
much decayed by the increase of the knitting-stocking engine or
frame, which has destroyed the hand-knitting trade for fine
stockings through the whole kingdom, of which I shall speak more in
its place.
From hence I came to Sherborne, a large and populous town, with one
collegiate or conventual church, and may properly claim to have
more inhabitants in it than any town in Dorsetshire, though it is
neither the county-town, nor does it send members to Parliament.
The church is still a reverend pile, and shows the face of great
antiquity. Here begins the Wiltshire medley clothing (though this
town be in Dorsetshire), of which I shall speak at large in its
place, and therefore I omit any discourse of it here.
Shaftesbury is also on the edge of this county, adjoining to
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, being fourteen miles from Salisbury,
over that fine down or carpet ground which they call particularly
or properly Salisbury Plain. It has neither house nor town in view
all the way; and the road, which often lies very broad and branches
off insensibly, might easily cause a traveller to lose his way.
But there is a certain never-failing assistance upon all these
downs for telling a stranger his way, and that is the number of
shepherds feeding or keeping their vast flocks of sheep which are
everywhere in the way, and who with a very little pains a traveller
may always speak with. Nothing can be like it. The Arcadians'
plains, of which we read so much pastoral trumpery in the poets,
could be nothing to them.
This Shaftesbury is now a sorry town upon the top of a high hill,
which closes the plain or downs, and whence Nature presents you a
new scene or prospect--viz., of Somerset and Wiltshire--where it is
all enclosed, and grown with woods, forests, and planted hedge-
rows; the country rich, fertile, and populous; the towns and houses
standing thick and being large and full of inhabitants, and those
inhabitants fully employed in the richest and most valuable
manufacture in the world--viz., the English clothing, as well the
medley or mixed clothing as whites, as well for the home trade as
the foreign trade, of which I shall take leave to be very
particular in my return through the west and north part of
Wiltshire in the latter part of this work.
In my return to my western progress, I passed some little part of
Somersetshire, as through Evil or Yeovil, upon the River Ivil, in
going to which we go down a long steep hill, which they call
Babylon Hill, but from what original I could find none of the
country people to inform me.
This Yeovil is a market-town of good resort; and some clothing is
carried on in and near it, but not much. Its main manufacture at
this time is making of gloves.
It cannot pass my observation here that when we are come this
length from London the dialect of the English tongue, or the
country way of expressing themselves, is not easily understood--it
is so strangely altered. It is true that it is so in many parts of
England besides, but in none in so gross a degree as in this part.
This way of boorish country speech, as in Ireland it is called the
"brogue" upon the tongue, so here it is called "jouring;" and it is
certain that though the tongue be all mere natural English, yet
those that are but a little acquainted with them cannot understand
one-half of what they say. It is not possible to explain this
fully by writing, because the difference is not so much in the
orthography of words as in the tone and diction--their abridging
the speech, "cham" for "I am," "chil" for "I will," "don" for "put
on," and "doff" for "put off," and the like. And I cannot omit a
short story here on this subject. Coming to a relation's house,
who was a school-master at Martock, in Somersetshire, I went into
his school to beg the boys a play-day, as is usual in such cases (I
should have said, to beg the master a play-day. But that by the
way). Coming into the school, I observed one of the lowest
scholars was reading his lesson to the usher, which lesson, it
seems, was a chapter in the Bible.
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