On July 5 he landed at Carrickfergus, where he found that Lord Chichester had a stately house, ‘or rather like a prince’s palace.’  In Belfast, he said, my Lord Chichester had another daintie, stately palace, which, indeed, was the glory and beauty of the town.  And there were also daintie orchards, gardens, and walks planted.  The Bishop of Dromore, to whom the town of Dromore entirely belonged, lived there in a ‘little timber house.’  He was not given to hospitality, for though his chaplain was a Manchester man, named Leigh, he allowed his English visitor to stop at an inn over the way.  ‘This,’ wrote the tourist, ’is a very dear house, 8 d. ordinary for ourselves, 6 d. for our servants, and we were overcharged in beere.’  The way thence to Newry was most difficult for a stranger to find out.  ’Therein he wandered, and, being lost, fell among the Irish touns.’  The Irish houses were the poorest cabins he had seen, erected in the middle of fields and grounds which they farmed and rented.  ‘This,’ he added, ‘is a wild country, not inhabited, planted, nor enclosed.’  He gave an Irishman ‘a groat’ to bring him into the way, yet he led him, like a villein, directly out of the way, and so left him in the lurch.

Leaving Belfast, this Englishman said:  ’Near hereunto, Mr. Arthur Hill, son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come.  The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000 l. per annum.  Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted.  They sit upon a rack-rent, and pay 5 s. or 6 s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent good corne.’

According to the Down survey, made twenty-two years later, Dromore had not improved:  ’There are no buildings in this parish; only Dromore, it being a market town, hath some old thatched houses and a ruined church standing in it.  What other buildings are in the parish are nothing but removeable creaghts.’

To the economist and the legislator, the most interesting portions of the state papers of the 16th and 17th centuries are, undoubtedly, those which tell us how the people lived, how they were employed, housed, and fed, what measure of happiness fell to their lot, and what were the causes that affected their welfare, that made them contented and loyal, or miserable and disaffected.  Contemporary authors, who deal with social phenomena, are also read with special interest for the same reason.  They present pictures of society in their own time, and enable us to conceive the sort of life our forefathers led, and to estimate, at least in a rough way, what they did for posterity.