THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 201 



aestuarium of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together, 

 namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent ; and 

 (as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, 

 Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into this 

 of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it. 



4. Medway, a Kentish river, famous for harbouring the royal 

 navy. 



5. Tweed, the north-east bound of England, on whose 

 northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of 

 Berwick. 



6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle and her inexhaustible coal 

 pits. These, and the rest of principal note, are thus compre- 

 hended in one of Mr Drayton's sonnets : 



Our flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd ; 



And stately Severn for her shore is praised ; 

 The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd ; 



And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised. 



Carlegian Chester vaunts her holy Dee ; 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be, 



And Kent will say her Medway doth excel. 



Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame ; 



Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood ; 

 Our western parts extol their Willy's fame, 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood. * 



* " LEE flu. LYGAN, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsan Marcellinus.^ Lea 

 Polydoro. The name of the water which (runnyn betwene Ware and 

 London,) devydethe, for a great part of the way, Essex and Hertford- 

 shire. It begynnethe near a place called Whitchurche ; and from thence, 

 passinge by Hertford, Ware, and Waltham, openethe into the Thamise 

 at Ham in Essex ; wheare the place is, at this day, called Lee Mouthe. It 

 hathe, of longe tyme, borne vessels from London, twenty miles towards 

 the head ; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, 

 and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, twenty myles from Lon- 

 don, where, by fortune, Kinge Alfrede passinge by, espied that the 

 channel of the ryver might be in such sorte weakened, that they should 

 want water to return withe their shippes : he caused therefore the water 

 to be abated Dy two greate trenches, and settinge the Londoners upon 

 theim, he made theim batteil j wherein they lost four of their capitaines, 

 and a great nomber of their common souldiers, the reste flyinge into the 

 castle which they had builte. Not longe after, they weare so pressed that 

 they forsoke all, and left their shippes as a pray to the Londoners ; which 

 breakinge some, and burninge other, conveyed the rest to London. This 

 castle, for the distance, might seme Hertforde ; but it was some other 

 upon that banke, which had no longe continuance ; for Edward the elder, 

 and son of this Alfrede, builded Hertforde not longe after." Vide Lam- 

 barde's Dictionarium Topographicum, voce Lee. Drayton's Potyolbion, 

 Song the Twelfth, and the first note thereon. 



Other authors, who confirm this fact, also add, " That for the purpose 

 aforesaid he opened the mouth of the river." See Sir William Dugdale's 

 History of the embanking and draining the Fens, and Sir John Spelman's 

 Life ofJElfred the Great, published by Hearne, in 8vo, 1709 ; the perusal of 

 which last-named author will leave the reader in very little doubt but that 



