But Now By The Application, And At The
Expense, Of The Citizens The Channel Of The River Is So Widened,
Deepened, and cleansed from the shoal, which would otherwise
interrupt the navigation, that the ships come now quite up to
The
city, and there with ease both deliver and take in their lading.
This city drives a very great correspondence with Holland, as also
directly to Portugal, Spain, and Italy--shipping off vast
quantities of their woollen manufactures especially to Holland, the
Dutch giving very large commissions here for the buying of serges
perpetuans, and such goods; which are made not only in and about
Exeter, but at Crediton, Honiton, Culliton, St.-Mary-Ottery, Newton
Bushel, Ashburton, and especially at Tiverton, Cullompton, Bampton,
and all the north-east part of the county--which part of the county
is, as it may be said, fully employed, the people made rich, and
the poor that are properly so called well subsisted and employed by
it.
Exeter is a large, rich, beautiful, populous, and was once a very
strong city; but as to the last, as the castle, the walls, and all
the old works are demolished, so, were they standing, the way of
managing sieges and attacks of towns is such now, and so altered
from what it was in those days, that Exeter in the utmost strength
it could ever boast would not now hold out five days open trenches-
-nay, would hardly put an army to the trouble of opening trenches
against it at all.
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