Aspects of Kentish Local History

market or other and we got some of them for ourselves, and my Lord ordered some for the servants, which considering the heat I do not wonder [p.79] they embraced greedily, but I believe both they as well as we wish they had been let alone, for everybody found some inconvenience from them. I wish it was not they that infected John Newman's horse, which had the bellyache all that night and next day, and John sympathized with his horse or his horse with him: I shall not forget their name in haste, they were called poitrin pears. It was a little hard, considering what fine orchards we saw on each side of us, we should have no better fortune with fruit on the first venture; but considering again that Kentish cherries were long since out of season, and Kentish pippins not yet come in, we might rest well contented with tasting poitrin pears, or smelling Kentish lime kilns.
   When we came within half a mile of Ospringe, there is a little way on the right of the road a pretty tolerable house built by one Jugg, and called by the Kentish wits Jugg's Folly, the builder of it, who owned the powder mills at Faversham, having been broke by carrying on this edifice, or rather, very properly as my Lord expressed it, he was blown up by it. We turned off the great road on the left hand at Ospringe, and riding about half a mile got to the "Ship" at Faversham, at half-hour

past seven that evening, so that it was too late for us to look about the town that night. It is a pretty large town, and is governed by a Mayor, a Recorder, twelve Jurats, and twenty-four Common Councilmen, sends no members of parliament, but seems as factious and as full of discord as if it did. It subsists chiefly by the benefit of a creek, through which the tide comes up to the very town, and brings ships of a pretty large burden. Their chief commodity is oysters, in which they deal for above 7,000l. annually. *
   The next morning betwixt six and seven o'clock we looked a little about the town, and went through a very large open spacious street (called Court Street) in order to see the church. This street has very little besides its spaciousness to brag of, there being no houses in it that make any extraordinary figure, though there is one which is somewhat memorable; it is on the right hand, about the middle of the street as we went along. It is  the house in which King James [II]⁵ was when he endeavoured to get off at this place. While he was in it the Prince of Orange's Declaration was read under his window by one Napleton,⁶ an inferior sort of lawyer, who had notice of his Majesty's being
   * Twenty years later they estimated they lost £9000 by a frost. See paper on Briefs, p. 33. —ED.