GRAY'S THURROCK,

is about twenty-five miles from London, on the banks of the Thames, opposite Dartford in Kent. Its trade is inconsiderable; but it has a fair yearly on the 23d of May, for pedlary, and a market on Thursday, at which a considerable quantity of grain is sold, by sample, to the London factors.

The town is small, and pleasantly situated on the side of a hill. It has a good market place, and market house, over which is the large sessions room where the petit sessions are held. Here is also a spacious wharf. Its situation on the river is about half way between Purfleet magazines and Tilbury Fort.

Gray's Thurrock was so called from its antient possessor, Henry Grey, in the reign of Richard I. He was progenitor of the lords Grey of Codnor, Wilton, Rotherfield, and Ruthin. This family held it till the reign of Henry VIII. when the estate came to other possessors, by pur chase, &c.

BELMONT CASTLE, most delightfully situated, one mile from Grays, was the property and residence of the late Zachariah Button, Esq. who finished it in a costly style of Gothic architecture, The building contains, besides other convenient apartments, a circular neatly finished room, called the Round Tower, from whence there are the most delightful prospects of the river Thames, of the shipping, for many miles, and of the rich Kentish inclosures, to the hills beyond the great Dover road. An elegant drawing room, with circular front, highly encircled; a cheerful entrance hall, finished with Gothic mouldings, niches for figures or lamps, and paved with stone, and black marble dots; a spacious eating room, finished with an highly enriched cornice, grey stucco sides, and Gothic mouldings; a beautiful chimney piece, and wainscot floor; the library is oval shaped, and very elegantly fitted up and finished with Gothic book cases and mouldings; from this room a double flight of handsome stone steps descend to the terrace,

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terrace, fronting the great lawn, and in full view of the river. The large and very excellent kitchen garden, is encompassed with lofty walls, clothed and planted with a choice selection of the best fruit trees, and a capital hothouse. Surrounding the house, are the pleasure grounds, which are beautifully and tastefully disposed, and ornamented with very valuable forest trees, shrubs, and plants, terminating towards the west by a Gothic temple, and towards the east by an orchard and paddock. There are two approaches to the house, the one by the neat brick Gothic lodge, through the great south lawn, from the road between West Thurrock and Grays; and the other from the village of Stifford, by the north lawn.

Great part of the lands in the levels, especially those on this side East Tilbury, are held by the farmers, cowkeepers, and grazing butchers, who live in and near London, and generally stock them with Lincolnshire and Leicestershire wethers (which they buy in Smithfield in September and October, when the graziers sell off their stock), and feed here till Christmas or Candlemas; and, though they are not made much fatter here than when bought in, yet very good advantage accrues by the difference of the price of mutton between Michaelmas when cheapest, and Candlemas when dearest; and this is what the butchers call, by way of excellence, right marsh mutton. This mutton is generally taken, by persons who are ignorant in the choice of meat, to be turnip-fed, because the fat generally turns yellowish; but this is a great mistake; for the sheep, which are fatted with turnips, are by far the best of any killed for the markets.

At the end of these marshes is EAST TILBURY. "In this parish," says Morant," was the ancient ferry over the Thames. The famous Higham Causeway from Rochester by Higham, yet visible, points out the place of the old ferry; and this is, with great reason, supposed to be the very place where the emperor Claudius crossed the Thames, in pursuit of the Britons, as related by Dion Cassius, i. 60." In this parish is a field, called Cave Field, in which is an horizontal

horizontal passage to one of the spacious caverns in the, neighbouring parish of Chadwell. Of these Camden has given a sketch in his Britannia; and he describes them as in a chalky cliff, built very artificially of stone, to the height, of ten fathoms, and somewhat straight at top. Dr. Derham measured three of the most considerable of them, and found the depth of one of them to be fifty feet, of another seventy feet, and of the third eighty feet. Their origin is too remote for investigation.

WEST TILBURY is also near the mouth of the Thames. Here the four Roman proconsular ways crossed each other, and, in the year 630, this was the see of bishop Ceadda,. or St. Chad, who converted the East Saxons. In this. parish is a celebrated spring of alterative water, discovered in 1717. When the Spanish armada was in the channel, in 1588, queen Elizabeth had a camp here, which was where. the windmill now stands; and there are some traces of it still visible.

It was here also that she delivered the following celebrated speech to her army:

"MY LOVING PEOPLE,

"We have been persuaded by some, that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery: but I assure you, I do not live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself, that, under God, I have placed my cheifest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. And therefore I am come amongst you, as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of the battaile to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the bodie but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king! and of a king of England too! and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm, to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms-I myself will be your General, Judge, and Rewarder • VOL. VI. No. 130.

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of everie one of your virtues in the field. I know alreadie for your forwardnesse, you have deserved crownes; and we do as sure you, in the word of a Prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time my lieutenant-general* shall be in my stead, than whom never Prince commanded a more noble or worthie subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general,-by your concord in the camp,-and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victorie over those enemies of my God, of my kingdomes, and of my people." +

TILBURY FORT, in the parish of West Tilbury, opposite Gravesend, is a regular fortification, and may be termed the key to London. The design of it was a pentagon, but the water bastion, as it should have been called, was never built: the plan was laid out by Sir Martin Beckman, chief engineer to king Charles II. who also designed the works at Sheerness. The esplanade of the fort is very large, and the bastions the largest of any in England. The foundation is laid upon piles driven down, two an end of one another, so far, till they were assured they were below the channel of the river, and that the piles, which were shod with iron, entered into the solid chalk rock, adjoining to the chalk hills on the other side. The works on the land side are complete; the bastions are faced with brick. There is a double ditch or moat, the innermost of which is one hundred and eighty feet broad; a good counterscarp, and à covered way marked out, with ravelins and tenailies; but they have not been completed. On the land side there are two small redoubts of brick; but the chief strength of this fort on the land side consists in being able to lay the whole level under water, and so to make it impossible for an, enemy to carry on approaches that way. On the side next the river, is a very strong curtain, with a noble gate called the Watergate in the middle, and the ditch is palisadoed. At the place where the water bastion was designed to be built, and which, by the plan, should run, wholly out into the river, so as to flank the two curtains on

* Robert Devereux, earl of Essex.

+ Cabala, p. 260.

each