Sir William Burrell's Northern Tour,1758
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SIR WILLIAM BURRELL’S NORTHERN TOUR,1758 Edited and introduced by John G Dunbar Sources in Local History CONTENTS Preface to the online edition iv Preface v Introduction vii Acknowledgments xx Glossary xxi Journal 1 Notes 89 Further Reading 95 III PREFACE TO THE ONLINE EDITION riginally published in 1997, Sir William Burrell’s Northern Tour, 1758 was Othe sixth volume in the Sources in Local History series established by Professor Alexander Fenton, founding director of the European Ethnological Research Centre. It is reproduced in electronic form here as part of the revived, online series, with additional endnotes, a glossary and a further reading section, and a new set of images selected from the collections of the British Museum and the National Library of Scotland. The front cover illustration shows Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire, drawn by Thomas Sandby (©Trustees of the British Museum, BM1904,0818.424). The EERC is grateful to John G Dunbar for his permission to reproduce the original introduction and transcription. Kenneth Veitch European Ethnological Research Centre IV PREFACE ith this publication of William Burrell’s Tour of 1758, the European WEthnological Research Centre (EERC) broadens the scope covered by its Sources in Local History series. So far it has concentrated on the publication of the texts of diaries and account books, since these have been relatively little explored by researchers, and since there is an international movement to study them. Publications so far have been of documents of a highly personal nature, which had more to do with their own localities than with overviews of wider regions. The EERC will continue to publish such sources, to provide material for future research work by scholars of various kinds, but it will also take on board sources like the present one. This, an early and detailed account of journeying on horseback in Scotland before the concept of tourism was known, throws a great deal of light on the various localities that William Burrell visited. In some ways it is a positive virtue that he was an Englishman, since he was able to set his English background off against what he saw in Scotland, and this makes comparison possible. Even at the simple level of wallpaper being used in Kelso houses, as in England, but not elsewhere (to his knowledge) in Scotland, we learn something of the impact of the Border situation. In a similar way, at a later date in the eighteenth century, Johnson and Boswell commented from time to time on comparisons between the food of the Scots and the food of the English. It is in this kind of way, cumulatively, that indicators of national identity or characteristics can come to the fore. Burrell was an acute observer, with an eye to the economics of farming and food-prices, and we learn a great deal about such matters. Turnips, for example, were already being grown in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, and the potato business was flourishing in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Like most other travellers, he commented fairly regularly on the nature of his accommodation, mostly at inns, and a good picture of the facilities for travellers can be got. Equally, there are interesting details about the food V available. For example, in south-west Scotland they had boiled eggs and Cheshire cheese, with tea, for breakfast and the eggs at least are in line with the comments of many other travellers, some of whom despaired about the quality of Scottish cooking, and depended very largely on boiled eggs, not so much for breakfast as for other meals. Chicken broth is mentioned, and at various times there was sour milk and goats’ whey and buttermilk to drink. But Burrell was not only concerned with things of the stomach and of economics. He also commented extensively on important buildings and structures, and on life at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St Andrews, as well as giving full accounts of paintings to be found in these seats of learning. He obviously had an eye for the aesthetic. This is not an outstanding work of literature, but it is of great historical value, providing comments on different localities – in England and Ireland as well as in Scotland – that are not available elsewhere, and the work in general helps to fill in gaps in the record of history. John Dunbar is to be greatly congratulated on his painstaking work in transcribing the text from the manuscript in the National Library of Scotland, and on annotating the document so fully. It is a worthy addition to the Sources in Local History series, and should be the forerunner of many more. Alexander Fenton VI INTRODUCTION illiam Burrell was a member of a prominent landed and mercantile Wfamily settled mainly in Sussex and Kent. His father, Peter Burrell of Beckenham, Kent, was MP for Haslemere for more than thirty years and his elder brother, another Peter, was likewise an assiduous parliamentarian. William Burrell himself was born in 1732 and educated at Westminster School and St John’s College, Cambridge. As a younger son, he had to find a profession and after qualifying LLB in 1755 he was admitted an advocate at Doctors’ Commons in 1760, in which year he also took his LLD degree. Burrell practised chiefly in the Admiralty Court, but also became chancellor of the diocese of Worcester and subsequently of Rochester. In 1768 he entered parliament, holding the family seat of Haslemere for six years before vacating it on acceptance of a commissionership of the excise. Burrell’s personal appearance is known from contemporary portraits. He was described by his friend William Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, as ‘an active, stirring man; a good Antiquary. He is rather low, and squints a little; but is very ingenious, and scholar-like’. The Burrells had a reputation for making fortunate marriages and William was no exception in this respect. A year after his marriage to Sophia, daughter of Charles Raymond, a banker, in 1773 his father-in-law was created a baronet with reversion of the title to William and his heirs. To the considerable wealth acquired through his marriage, therefore, Burrell in due course added a baronetcy, succeeding his father-in-law as 2nd baronet of Valentine House, Essex, in 1789. Moreover, his wife possessed talent as well as wealth, being widely acknowledged as a gifted poetess and dramatist. Two years before he succeeded to the baronetcy Burrell suffered a severe stroke which compelled him to withdraw from public life. He had hoped to spend his retirement completing his history of the county of Sussex, upon which he had been engaged for many years, but ill-health denied him the satisfaction of bringing the work to publication and at his death in 1796 the VII fruits of his labours, in the shape of fifteen volumes of manuscripts and eight large folio volumes of drawings, passed to the British Museum. Burrell died at Deepdene, Dorking, where he had spent his final years, but he was buried at West Grinstead, Sussex. There are monuments to him by Flaxman both there and at the earlier Burrell seat of Cuckfield in the same county. The family connection with Sussex continues to the present day and the baronetcy is currently held by one of Sir William’s direct descendants.1 Burrell’s researches into the history of Sussex were the culmination of a lifelong interest in historical and antiquarian studies of which the journal of his Scottish tour is the earliest known manifestation. The journal contains no direct evidence as to its date and authorship, but it offers a number of clues from which this information can be elicited. The manuscript bears the bookplate of Sir William Wyndham Burrell of West Grinstead (William’s grandson), who died in 1886, and the preliminary leaves incorporate the initials WB and the inscription ‘Given to Sophia Burrell’. Correlation of the days of the week with the days of the month, coupled with references to certain known events,2 points to 1758 as the year of compilation, and the author’s account of his reception at Inveraray, where the travellers were accorded the freedom of the burgh, can be matched to an entry in the burgh records for 2 September of that year, which identifies the party as William Burrell Esq., John Symonds Esq., William Beal, servant, and John Swan, servant.3 The only time that Burrell’s travelling companion, ‘Mr Symonds’, is mentioned by name in the journal is the occasion of their initial rendezvous at Huntingdon. No indication is given of Symonds’ identity, but it is possible that he was the John Symonds, son of the Reverend John Symonds, vicar of Dullingham and Stetchworth, Cambridgeshire, who went up to St John’s College, Cambridge, at the same time as Burrell. The younger Symonds was ordained in 1754 and subsequently served as curate at Stetchworth before getting a living of his own.4 Perhaps the two young men – Burrell celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday during the tour while Symonds was a few months older – kept up a college friendship by occasionally travelling together. Certainly Huntingdon would have been the obvious place to meet on the road north had Symonds been coming from Cambridgeshire. Another puzzle is the identity of the person referred to by Burrell when he remarks that on the first day of the tour he had no opportunity of making such observations ‘as either my own genius or a desire to execute VIII your injunctions prompted me to’. In view of Burrell’s comparative youth it might be supposed that the objectives of the tour would have been shaped by parental advice, but his father had died two years previously.