STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685.

ration, to be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand

souls.* -

Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and impor-tance, were some other ancient capitals of shires. In thatage it was seldom that a country gentleman went up with hisfamily to London. The county town was his metropolis. Hesometimes made it his residence during part of the year. Atall events, he was often attracted thither by business andpleasure, by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters ofmilitia, festivals, and races. There were the halls where thejudges, robed in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trum-pets, opened the King’s commission twice a year. Therewere the markets at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, andthe hops of the surrounding country were exposed to sale.

There were the great fairs to which merchants came downfrom London, and where the rural dealer laid in his annualstores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There werethe shops at which the best families of the neighbourhoodbought grocery and millinery. Some of these places deriveddignity from interesting historical recollections, from cathe-drals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the middleages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates haddwelt, from closes surrounded by the venerable abodes ofdeans and canons, and from castles which had in the old timerepelled the Nevilles or De Veres, and which bore more re-cent traces of the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.

Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, otherthe capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the towns?west. Neither can have contained much more than ten thou-sand inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land,had about eight thousand; Nottingham probably as many.

* Fuller’s Worthies; Evelyn’s Diary, Oct. 17. 1671; Journal of E.Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 166J; Blomefield’s History ofNorfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 yols. 1768.