a fort on the south-east point of it; and generally in case of
Dutch war, there is a strong body of troops kept there to defend
it.
At this place may be said to end what we call the Hundreds of Essex
– that is to say, the three Hundreds or divisions which include the
marshy country, viz., Barnstable Hundred, Rochford Hundred, and
Dengy Hundred.
I have one remark more before I leave this damp part of the world,
and which I cannot omit on the women’s account, namely, that I took
notice of a strange decay of the sex here; insomuch that all along
this country it was very frequent to meet with men that had had
from five or six to fourteen or fifteen wives; nay, and some more.
And I was informed that in the marshes on the other side of the
river over against Candy Island there was a farmer who was then
living with the five-and-twentieth wife, and that his son, who was
but about thirty-five years old, had already had about fourteen.
Indeed, this part of the story I only had by report, though from
good hands too; but the other is well known and easy to be inquired
into about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersly, Benfleet, Prittlewell,
Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham, Dengy, and other
towns of the like situation. The reason, as a merry fellow told
me, who said he had had about a dozen and a half of wives (though I
found afterwards he fibbed a little) was this: That they being bred
in the marshes themselves and seasoned to the place, did pretty
well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly country,
or, to speak their own language, into the uplands for a wife. That
when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air
they were healthy, fresh, and clear, and well; but when they came
out of their native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps,
there they presently changed their complexion, got an ague or two,
and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at most; “And
then,” said he, “we go to the uplands again and fetch another;” so
that marrying of wives was reckoned a kind of good farm to them.
It is true the fellow told this in a kind of drollery and mirth;
but the fact, for all that, is certainly true; and that they have
abundance of wives by that very means. Nor is it less true that
the inhabitants in these places do not hold it out, as in other
countries, and as first you seldom meet with very ancient people
among the poor, as in other places we do, so, take it one with
another, not one-half of the inhabitants are natives of the place;
but such as from other countries or in other parts of this country
settle here for the advantage of good farms; for which I appeal to
any impartial inquiry, having myself examined into it critically in
several places.
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