Tour through the Eastern Counties
of England
I began my travels where I purpose to end them, viz., at the City of
London, and therefore my account of the city itself will come last, that is
to say, at the latter end of my southern progress; and as in the course of
this journey I shall have many occasions to call it a circuit, if not a circle,
so I chose to give it the title of circuits in the plural, because I do not
pretend to have travelled it all in one journey, but in many, and some of
them many times over; the better to inform myself of everything I could
find worth taking notice of.
I hope it will appear that I am not the less, but the more capable of
giving a full account of things, by how much the more deliberation I have
taken in the view of them, and by how much the oftener I have had
opportunity to see them.
I set out the 3rd of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took what I
think I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter of it; for I went
down by the coast of the Thames through the Marshes or Hundreds on the
south side of the county of Essex, till I came to Malden, Colchester, and
Harwich, thence continuing on the coast of Suffolk to Yarmouth; thence
round by the edge of the sea, on the north and west side of Norfolk, to
Lynn, Wisbech, and the Wash; thence back again, on the north side of
Suffolk and Essex, to the west, ending it in Middlesex, near the place
where I began it, reserving the middle or centre of the several counties to
some little excursions, which I made by themselves.