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.
This house was afterwards settled, with a royal revenue also, as an
appanage (established by Parliament) upon Prince George of Denmark
for his life, in case he had out-lived the queen; but his Royal
Highness dying before her Majesty, all hope of seeing this design
perfected, or the house finished, is now vanished.
I cannot omit that there are several public edifices in this city
and in the neighbourhood, as the hospitals and the building
adjoining near the east gate; and towards the north a piece of an
old monastery undemolished, and which is still preserved to the
religion, being the residence of some private Roman Catholic
gentlemen, where they have an oratory, and, as they say, live still
according to the rules of St. Benedict. This building is called
Hide House; and as they live very usefully, and to the highest
degree obliging among their neighbours, they meet with no
obstruction or disturbance from anybody.
Winchester is a place of no trade other than is naturally
occasioned by the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages
one with another. Here is no manufacture, no navigation; there was
indeed an attempt to make the river navigable from Southampton, and
it was once made practicable, but it never answered the expense so
as to give encouragement to the undertakers.
Here is a great deal of good company, and abundance of gentry being
in the neighbourhood, it adds to the sociableness of the place.
The clergy also here are, generally speaking, very rich and very
numerous.
As there is such good company, so they are gotten into that new-
fashioned way of conversing by assemblies. I shall do no more than
mention them here; they are pleasant and agreeable to the young
peoples, and sometimes fatal to them, of which, in its place,
Winchester has its share of the mirth. May it escape the ill-
consequences!
The hospital on the south of this city, at a mile distant on the
road to Southampton, is worth notice. It is said to be founded by
King William Rufus, but was not endowed or appointed till later
times by Cardinal Beaufort. Every traveller that knocks at the
door of this house in his way, and asks for it, claims the relief
of a piece of white bread and a cup of beer, and this donation is
still continued. A quantity of good beer is set apart every day to
be given away, and what is left is distributed to other poor, but
none of it kept to the next day.
How the revenues of this hospital, which should maintain the master
and thirty private gentlemen (whom they call Fellows, but ought to
call Brothers), is now reduced to maintain only fourteen, while the
master lives in a figure equal to the best gentleman in the
country, would be well worth the inquiry of a proper visitor, if
such can be named. It is a thing worthy of complaint when public
charities, designed for the relief of the poor, are embezzled and
depredated by the rich, and turned to the support of luxury and
pride.
From Winchester is about twenty-five miles, and over the most
charming plains that can anywhere be seen (far, in my opinion,
excelling the plains of Mecca), we come to Salisbury. The vast
flocks of sheep which one everywhere sees upon these Downs, and the
great number of those flocks, is a sight truly worth observation;
it is ordinary for these flocks to contain from three thousand to
five thousand in a flock, and several private farmers hereabouts
have two or three such flocks.
But it is more remarkable still how a great part of these Downs
comes, by a new method of husbandry, to be not only made arable
(which they never were in former days), but to bear excellent
wheat, and great crops, too, though otherwise poor barren land, and
never known to our ancestors to be capable of any such thing--nay,
they would perhaps have laughed at any one that would have gone
about to plough up the wild downs and hills where the sheep were
wont to go. But experience has made the present age wiser and more
skilful in husbandry; for by only folding the sheep upon the
ploughed lands--those lands which otherwise are barren, and where
the plough goes within three or four inches of the solid rock of
chalk, are made fruitful and bear very good wheat, as well as rye
and barley. I shall say more of this when I come to speak of the
same practice farther in the country.
This plain country continues in length from Winchester to Salisbury
(twenty-five miles), from thence to Dorchester (twenty-two miles),
thence to Weymouth (six miles); so that they lie near fifty miles
in length and breadth; they reach also in some places thirty-five
to forty miles.
