’The next morning early we left Scarborough and travelled through a dismall road, particularly near Robins Hood Bay; we were obliged to lead our horses, and had much ado to get down a vast craggy mountain which lyes within a quarter of a mile of it.  The Bay is about a mile broad, and inhabited by poor fishermen.  We stopt to taste some of their liquor and discourse with them.  They told us the French privateers came into the Very Bay and took 2 of their Vessels but the day before, which were ransom’d for L25 a piece.  We saw a great many vessels lying upon the Shore, the masters not daring to venture out to sea for fear of undergoing the same fate.’

We boast too readily of our inviolate shores.

A curious description is given of the Duke of Buckingham’s alum works near Whitby.  The travellers then procured a guide, and traversed ’the vast moors which lye between Whitby and Gisborough.’  The civic magnificence of Newcastle greatly struck our travellers, who, happier than their modern successors, were able to see the town miles off.  The Itinerist quotes with gusto the civic proverb that the men of Newcastle pay nothing for the Way, the Word, or the Water, ’for the Ministers of Religion are maintained, the streets paved, and the Conduits kept up at the publick charge.’  A disagreeable account is given of the brutishness of the people employed in the salt works at Tynemouth.  At Berwick the travellers got into trouble with the sentry, but the mistake was rectified with the captain of the guard over ’2 bowles of punch, there being no wine in the town.’

Scotland was now in sight, and the travellers became grave, as befitted the occasion.  They were told that the journey that lay before them was extremely dangerous, that ’twould be difficult to escape with their lives, much less (ominous words) without ’the distemper of the country.’  But Mr. Taylor, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Sloman were as brave as Mr. Pickwick, and they would on.  ’Yet notwithstanding all these sad representations, we resolv’d to proceed and stand by one another to the last.’

What the Itinerists thought of Scotland when they got there is not for me to say.  I was once a Scottish member.

They arrived in Edinburgh at a great crisis in Scottish history.  They saw the Duke of Argyll, as Queen Anne’s Lord High Commissioner, go to the Parliament House in this manner: 

’First a coach and six Horses for his Gentlemen, then a Trumpet, then his own coach with six white horses, which were very fine, being those presented by King William to the Duke of Queensbury, and by him sold to the Duke of Argyle for L300; next goes a troop of Horse Guards, cloathed like my Lord of Oxford’s Regiment, but the horses are of several colours; and the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State, and the Lord Chief Justice Clerk, and other officers of State close the cavalcade in coaches and six horses.  Thus the Commissioner