It Is True, This Town Is Manifestly Decayed By The
Invasion Of The Waters, And As Other Towns Seem Sufferers
By the
sea, or the tide withdrawing from their ports, such as Orford, just
now named, Winchelsea in Kent, and
The like, so this town is, as it
were, eaten up by the sea, as above; and the still encroaching
ocean seems to threaten it with a fatal immersion in a few years
more.
Yet Dunwich, however ruined, retains some share of trade, as
particularly for the shipping of butter, cheese, and corn, which is
so great a business in this county, that it employs a great many
people and ships also; and this port lies right against the
particular part of the county for butter, as Framlingham, Halstead,
etc. Also a very great quantity of corn is bought up hereabout for
the London market; for I shall still touch that point how all the
counties in England contribute something towards the subsistence of
the great city of London, of which the butter here is a very
considerable article; as also coarse cheese, which I mentioned
before, used chiefly for the king's ships.
Hereabouts they begin to talk of herrings and the fishery; and we
find in the ancient records that this town, which was then equal to
a large city, paid, among other tribute to the government, fifty
thousand of herrings. Here also, and at Swole, or Southole, the
next seaport, they cure sprats in the same manner as they do
herrings at Yarmouth; that is to say, speaking in their own
language, they make red sprats; or to speak good English, they make
sprats red.
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