From The Marshes And Low Grounds Being Not Able To Travel Without
Many Windings And Indentures By Reason Of The
Creeks and waters, I
came up to the town of Malden, a noted market town situate at the
conflux or
Joining of two principal rivers in this county, the
Chelm or Chelmer, and the Blackwater, and where they enter into the
sea. The channel, as I have noted, is called by the sailors Malden
Water, and is navigable up to the town, where by that means is a
great trade for carrying corn by water to London; the county of
Essex being (especially on all that side) a great corn county.
When I have said this I think I have done Malden justice, and said
all of it that there is to be said, unless I should run into the
old story of its antiquity, and tell you it was a Roman colony in
the time of Vespasian, and that it was called Camolodunum. How the
Britons, under Queen Boadicea, in revenge for the Romans' ill-usage
of her--for indeed they used her majesty ill--they stripped her
naked and whipped her publicly through their streets for some
affront she had given them. I say how for this she raised the
Britons round the country, overpowered, and cut in pieces the Tenth
Legion, killed above eighty thousand Romans, and destroyed the
colony; but was afterwards overthrown in a great battle, and sixty
thousand Britons slain. I say, unless I should enter into this
story, I have nothing more to say of Malden, and, as for that
story, it is so fully related by Mr. Camden in his history of the
Romans in Britain at the beginning of his "Britannia," that I need
only refer the reader to it, and go on with my journey.
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