Worked the Ipswich men out of it who had formerly the chief
share of the colliery in their hands.
For the carrying on all these trades they must have a very great
number of ships, either of their own or employed by them: and it
may in some measure be judged of by this that in the year 1697, I
had an account from the town register that there was then 1,123
sail of ships using the sea and belonged to the town, besides such
ships as the merchants of Yarmouth might be concerned in, and be
part owners of, belonging to any other ports.
To all this I must add, without compliment to the town or to the
people, that the merchants, and even the generality of traders of
Yarmouth, have a very good reputation in trade as well abroad as at
home for men of fair and honourable dealing, punctual and just in
their performing their engagements and in discharging commissions;
and their seamen, as well masters as mariners, are justly esteemed
among the ablest and most expert navigators in England.
This town, however populous and large, was ever contained in one
parish, and had but one church; but within these two years they
have built another very fine church near the south end of the town.
The old church is dedicated to St. Nicholas, and was built by that
famous Bishop of Norwich, William Herbert, who flourished in the
reign of William II., and Henry I., William of Malmesbury, calls
him Vir Pecuniosus; he might have called him Vir Pecuniosissimus,
considering the times he lived in, and the works of charity and
munificence which he has left as witnesses of his immense riches;
for he built the Cathedral Church, the Priory for sixty monks, the
Bishop's Palace, and the parish church of St. Leonard, all in
Norwich; this great church at Yarmouth, the Church of St. Margaret
at Lynn, and of St. Mary at Elmham. He removed the episcopal see
from Thetford to Norwich, and instituted the Cluniack Monks at
Thetford, and gave them or built them a house. This old church is
very large, and has a high spire, which is a useful sea-mark.
Here is one of the finest market-places and the best served with
provisions in England, London excepted; and the inhabitants are so
multiplied in a few years that they seem to want room in their town
rather than people to fill it, as I have observed above.
The streets are all exactly straight from north to south, with
lanes or alleys, which they call rows, crossing them in straight
lines also from east to west, so that it is the most regular built
town in England, and seems to have been built all at once; or that
the dimensions of the houses and extent of the streets were laid
out by consent.
They have particular privileges in this town and a jurisdiction by
which they can try, condemn, and execute in especial cases without
waiting for a warrant from above; and this they exerted once very
smartly in executing a captain of one of the king's ships of war in
the reign of King Charles II. for a murder committed in the street,
the circumstance of which did indeed call for justice; but some
thought they would not have ventured to exert their powers as they
did. However, I never heard that the Government resented it or
blamed them for it.
It is also a very well-governed town, and I have nowhere in England
observed the Sabbath day so exactly kept, or the breach so
continually punished, as in this place, which I name to their
honour.
Among all these regularities it is no wonder if we do not find
abundance of revelling, or that there is little encouragement to
assemblies, plays, and gaming meetings at Yarmouth as in some other
places; and yet I do not see that the ladies here come behind any
of the neighbouring counties, either in beauty, breeding, or
behaviour; to which may be added too, not at all to their
disadvantage, that they generally go beyond them in fortunes.
From Yarmouth I resolved to pursue my first design, viz., to view
the seaside on this coast, which is particularly famous for being
one of the most dangerous and most fatal to the sailors in all
England--I may say in all Britain--and the more so because of the
great number of ships which are continually going and coming this
way in their passage between London and all the northern coasts of
Great Britain. Matters of antiquity are not my inquiry, but
principally observations on the present state of things, and, if
possible, to give such accounts of things worthy of recording as
have never been observed before; and this leads me the more
directly to mention the commerce and the navigation when I come to
towns upon the coast as what few writers have yet meddled with.
The reason of the dangers of this particular coast are found in the
situation of the county and in the course of ships sailing this
way, which I shall describe as well as I can thus:- The shore from
the mouth of the River of Thames to Yarmouth Roads lies in a
straight line from SSE. to NNW., the land being on the W. or
larboard side.
From Wintertonness, which is the utmost northerly point of land in
the county of Norfolk, and about four miles beyond Yarmouth, the
shore falls off for nearly sixty miles to the west, as far as Lynn
and Boston, till the shore of Lincolnshire tends north again for
about sixty miles more as far as the Humber, whence the coast of
Yorkshire, or Holderness, which is the east riding, shoots out
again into the sea, to the Spurn and to Flamborough Head, as far
east, almost, as the shore of Norfolk had given back at Winterton,
making a very deep gulf or bay between those two points of
Winterton and the Spurn Head; so that the ships going north are
obliged to stretch away to sea from Wintertonness, and leaving the
sight of land in that deep bay which I have mentioned, that reaches
to Lynn and the shore of Lincolnshire, they go, I say, N. or still
NNW.
