times of English history, the trade and manufacture of wool has been subject to a variety of laws and regulations. At first it was the produce of British flocks, which obtained the highest price in the wool markets of Europe, and it is said that the merino wool of Spain was the produce of sheep sent as a royal present from this country to the King of Castile, and called in consequence marino, or that which came from beyond the sea. It is recorded also that Tiptree heath for some time furnished wool of a superior quality. It was, however, soon found that we needed to manufacture as well as to grow the wool, but being inferior to our continental neighbours, it became the policy of this country to attract from the low countries of Holland and Flanders the Flemings to teach us the necessary skill. Even thus, as was to be expected, there had been continued fluctuation in the woollen manufacture, until a considerable impulse was given to it in this county by the arrival of a number of Dutch workers at Colchester, who had fled from Holland during the religious persecution of the Protestants by the Duke of Alva. From that time, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the woollen manufacture of bay and serge not only attained to great prosperity in Colchester, but gradually spread into the neighbouring towns of Dedhain, Sudbury, Halstead, Coggeshall, Bocking, &c. We are not surprised, therefore, to find proofs that the same trade existed in Witham also. We find in the reign of Henry VI. persons described in the lord's roll as Wolmongers, and subsequently others in legal documents as Websters.

To the woollen trade we owe the building of the Grove by Mr. Robert Barwell, who had been eminently successful in that business; at the same period, if we examine our charity deeds to find out who were the substantial men of the parish to become trustees, or if we look into the parish register to ascertain the character of our working population: in the one we find five or six out of 20 independent parishioners calling themselves clothiers, and in the other we find continually inserted the trade of comber, weaver, baymaker, occupations which are at present wholly unknown to us. The practice of spinning had been a hundred years before carried on to such an extent at Witham, that it was thought proper in an act of parliament regulating the size of the reel, to insert the name of this town as one to which the act should apply. About the beginning of the last century, it was the constant practice to employ the workhouse inmates in carding and spinning wool, and persons are now living who remember in their youth to have always seen the

spinning-wheel going before the cottage door, as the employment of the poor. There is moreover, from the following circumstance, every reason to suppose that some of the Dutch immigrants found their way to Witham and settled there :

When Mr. Smith was excavating the ground for a cellar behind his shop, some few years since: a few feet below the surface he found a common earthen jug, and some tobacco pipes, doubtless left among the rubbish when some former inhabitants left the premises; and no one who has seen one of the old Flemish pictures, with a party of peasants sitting down a table at their beer, can fail to recognize in the jug before us a drinking mug of some old baymakers from Holland. One inore memento of Witham trade. There was a kind of woollen manufacture, which is now out of use, but which used to be common, made at first in imitation of linen, which bore the name of Lockeram. It is referred to in acts of parliament; it is spoken of by Shakspeare and others, viz. in Corio

anus:

"All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights
Are spectacled to see him, your pretty nurse

Into a rapture lets her baby cry,

While she chats him; the kitchen malken pins
Her richest Lockeram 'bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye him."

Or, again, in another author of later date

"Thou thought'st because I did wear Lockram shirts

I had no wit."

Now if any one will go through the passage which connects Newland-street with Mill-field, and will observe how the houses are sunk below the path, in order to give height for the loom to stand; and if he will bear in mind that those looms were for the purpose of weaving lockeram, he will probably think the old name of Lockeram-lane a more appropriate and a better name than the pretentious title of Queen-street.

When the town of Witham became a continuous town I am not able to say; but we must date a considerable alteration in its appearance to a water bubble connected with the name of Dr. Taverner, in 1737. A mineral spring was discovered, its properties analyzed, a spacious pump-room erected, lodging-houses built to attract patients in search of health; a book published which, were it not for the respect known to be due to its author, would justly be classed with the advertisements of Holloway's ointment or Parr's life pill. After describing the virtues of the water and the diseases it is to cure, the author states, as though he had an interest in the pump-room and lodging-houses, that the

dyspeptic can be cured at Witham and Witham only. "It becomes necessary for those who could drink it to advantage to come to the spring and take it upon the spot. The volatile nature of the mineral spirit prevents its being sent to any distance, and it may possibly on that account be something longer before the public can be experimentally convinced of its goodness; but as this proceeds from the subtlety and volatility of its spirit, I leave it to the gentlemen of the faculty to determine whether this may not be esteemed a perfection in the water."

The mineral waters of Witham, however, had their day, although it was a short one. A spacious spa-room was once seen in the field opposite Spa-place, where patients went to drink the water: and afterwards, according to the custom of the time, kept up their spirits by public breakfasts and dancing, at which the neighbouring families attended; the house where Mr. Walford resides provided coffee and other refreshments for the visitors, and Witham was spoken of as a wateringplace. But the whole scheme we know failed, and the only memorials of it are, 1st, Dr. Taverner's book, which is only preserved by those who care for notices of Witham. 2nd, the Spa-place, which is I believe a kind of posthumous erection, and which certainly is not a place of fashionable resort, as my excellent friend, the present occupier, is not sorry to acknowledge; and, lastly, the mineral spring itself covered over with earth, and which I suppose not five persons in the parish would be able to discover. Before that time I suppose Witham must have been a singularly picturesque town, irregularly built, and, at different times: with deep roofs, narrow gables, and projecting stories, it must have looked, what it was, an ancient but unpretending country town; but it then aspired to be more, to be a second Bath or Cheltenham, to be a smirk and brisk watering-place, where antiquity was out of place, and the fashion of the day was alone to be countenanced.

But what I most complain of is that from that time an universal spirit of sham seemed to come over our houses. Every cottage must needs look like a mansion; every dwelling must be ashamed of its roof, and put on a new brick front, as though lath and plaster were a disgrace, and a gable end almost wicked. Now, if any one will walk down this Newland-street, he will see what an unreal thing Witham is. What pains have been taken to present a fair front without adding to the convenience within; what contrivances have been used to prevent the water falling from the roof, and to secure the never-ending employment of plumbers

and bricklayers to repair the gutters. I speak feelingly, for I myself have suffered by the spirit of sham; the Vicarage was made into a mansion, I suppose under the influence of the prevailing mania: and a whole outside was built up, leaving the roof to rest on its old lath and plaster support, so that a man can actually descend between the timber frame which supports the roof and the outside wall which supports nothing.

But I must bring to a close my story, which I fear has been already tedious to my kind listeners. I could have wished, had time allowed, to have referred to other subjects connected with Witham. I should have liked to trace the chief houses in Witham, from their first erection, through the different occupants to their present possessors; to have brought before you particulars of the Southcots and Stourtons, and Talbots; the Bennets and Barnardistons; the Barwells and Abercorns, and Kynastons, and DuCanes, and Pattissons; but time and labour and ability are wanting. Take a fact which ought to be examined: why were the assizes held here in the year 1568? I cannot tell. Queen Elizabeth's Chamberlain lived at Cressing Temple; and there was a most destructive hurricane at Chelmsford a few years before; but these facts do not help us much. It is probable that ever since those Assizes, in 1568, Mr. Blood's field, opposite the Avenue, has gone by the name of Gallows' Croft, and it is probably in sad connection with those gallows, that human bones were found (I understand) in the high road near the Roman Catholic chapel: namely the remains of the same criminals who were executed in Gallows' Croft, and buried in the cross road, because the bodies were not admitted into the church-yard.

I should have liked also to have ascertained the growth of our different religious communities in Witham-how, perhaps, one or two Roman Catholics here, objected to the progress of the Reformation, and were glad to gather round the owner of Witham Place: where Sir Edward Southcot had first a private chapel, and from which has gradually and naturally sprung the pretty Roman catholic chapel at the entrance of the town. Or one might perhaps have found in the time of the great rebellion some Newlandstreet descendant of the Witham Saxons or Danes, first sympathising with the long parliament in their ejection of the "scandalous" vicar of those days: and afterwards sympathising still more with the parliamentary minister who was ejected for non-conformity. And I can imagine this number of non-conformists gradually increasing; at first, meeting together where they could, doubtless at Terling or Maldon: until they became

numerous enough in 1716 to build a meeting for themselves, the foundation as it were of their present more spacious building.

Whether I could have found out much on these subjects, I know not: but I am free to confess that I grudge to neither of these religious bodies their present more convenient places of worship. I could wish from my heart that we were more united in our religious creed; that we could all worship together before our common Saviour, but of this I am persuaded, that when once a person is persuaded to seek God in that way which he thinks to be wrong, his conscience is defiled, and the very life of his religion becomes extinct. I hope, therefore, that at Witham most of us have learnt to respect another man's conscience, while we try to keep our own pure, and to maintain most firmly our own convictions, while we give credit to those who differ from us, for being as sincere as ourselves. A day is coming when Briton, Saxon, Dane and English shall rise and give account of their conflicts--happy shall we be in that day, if only we have each of us done that good which God has given us to do.

But Longfellow's well-known lines must come to my aid and release you :

Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream;

For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real, life is earnest,

And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment and not sorrow
Is our destin'á end or way,
But to act that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb driven cattle-
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant;
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act-act in the living Present,

Heart within and God o'er head!