290 History of the English Landed Interest. 



sea-sand. Occasionally he would glance downwards on tlie 

 trenches of stream works or upwards at the shafts of lode works 

 where was proceeding the breaking, stamping, drying, erasing, 

 washing, melting, and fining of the tin miner's industry. 

 Thence he would pass amidst the low valleys and wooded 

 ridges of Devonshire, and note " the lean and barren soil " on 

 which the husbandman spreads with success the " fertilizing 

 sea-sand." Onward stretches the great road into populous 

 Somerset with its rich pastures and cornlands dotted here and 

 there with stony hills. Though worthy of its name's deriva- 

 tion during the summer months, the county is " wet, weely, 

 miry, and moorish" during the cold season, so that the winter 

 traveller is glad to reach Tetbury and cross into the rich and 

 sheltered vale of Gloucester, where the highways and common 

 lanes are bordered with pear and apple trees of nature's sow- 

 ing, the fields fruitful in corn and grapes, the forests pro- 

 ductive of iron, and the hills depastured by the best fleeced 

 sheep in the world. Thence onward into the county of 

 Warwick, where the river Avon parts the " Feldon " from the 

 "Woodland." The former is rich in corn and green grass, 

 amidst which stand those mercats for sheep and kine, the 

 towns of Shipeton and Kinton. The latter is " thickset " with 

 woods, and yet not without pastures, cornfields and " sundry 

 mines of iron." Here the traveller might rest a night at 

 Coventry, a town even then " growing wealthy by clothing 

 and making of caps." Forward runs this king's highway 

 through the champaign country of woodless Leicestershire, 

 where the people have an " ill-favoured, untunable, and harsh 

 manner of speech, fetching their words with very much adoe 

 deepe from out of the throat with a certaine kind of wharling." 

 Passing on the south side distant Harborough, celebrated for 

 its cattle fairs, the wayfarer crosses Watling Street, whose 

 Roman engineering shows hereabouts traces of time's wear 

 and tear. The road now debouches upon the wild plains of 

 Notts, then trends away skirting Sherwood forest and across 

 the Trent to Newark, and so on through pastures and cornfields 

 to Lincoln, beyond which cathedral city lies the impassable 

 and boggy Holland, on cultivated parts of which, reclaimed 



