THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
T1MRE is only one book this week that makes really suitable reading for hot weather. That is Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century, by Joan Parkes (Oxford University Press). That courageous traveller, Mrs. Fiennes, is quoted as saying :- " If all persons, both ladies, much more Gentlemen. would spend some of their tyme in Journeys to visit their :native land and be curious to Inform themselves . . . it would fform such an Idea of England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds and cure the evil Itch of overvalueing foreign parts."
Mrs. Fiennes was a remarkable woman, of course, but most people could probably find little attraction in going journeys when roads were kept in such bad repair that men had been known (after drinking) to be drowned in the ruts in winter, and the mud reached to the saddlegirths. The roads of Sussex were so bad that the natives considered them a merciful dispensation of Providence—as a protection from invasion. Highwaymen were another danger. Everyone travelled armed as a matter of course, though when the attack actually came they made very poor-spirited attempts to defend themselves.
Highwaymen seldom did murder as well as robbery, which is perhaps surprising as a death sentence awaited them on capture in any case.
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