40 Country Rambles. 



the station for Vale Royal. "Vale Royal" is essentially 

 the name of the immense expanse of beautiful, though 

 nearly level, country over which the eye ranges when we 

 stand amid the ruins of Beeston Castle. It is still worthy 

 of the praise lavished on it in 1656. "The ayre of Vale 

 Royall," says the old historian of that date, "is verie 

 wholesome, insomuch that the people of the country are 

 seldom infected with Disease or Sicknesse, neither do 

 they use the help of Physicians, nothing so much, as in 

 other countries. For when any of them are sick, they 

 make him a posset, and tye a kerchief on his head; and 

 if that will not amend him, then God be mercifull to him ! 

 The people there live to be very old : some are Grand- 

 fathers, their fathers yet living, and some are Grandfathers 



before they be married They be very gentle and 



courteous, ready to help and further one another; in 

 Religion very zealous, howbeit somewhat addicted to 

 Superstition: otherwise stout, bold, and hardy: withal 

 impatient of wrong, and ready to resist the Enemy or 

 Stranger that shall invade their country. . . . Likewise 

 be the women very friendly and loving, in all kind of 

 Housewifery expert, fruitful in bearing Children after 

 they be married, and sometimes before. ... I know 

 divers men which are but farmers that may compare 

 therein with a Lord or Baron in some Countreys beyond 

 the Seas." A considerable portion of this great expanse 

 is represented in the still current appellation of Delamere 

 Forest, a term not to be understood as meaning that it 

 was at any time covered by timber trees, either indigenous 



