At Woodstock we saw part of the old palace, and her famous labyrinth, which is since destroyed: her bathing-place, or well (as called) is left, a quadrangular receptacle of most pure water, immediately flowing from a little spring under the hill, and over-shadowed with trees: near it some few ruins of walls and arches. King Ethelred called a parliament here; it has been a royal seat from most ancient times: Henry I. inclosed the park. A-cross this valley was a remarkably fine echo, that would repeat a whole hexameter, but impaired by the removal of these buildings. A stately bridge from hence now leads along the grand approach to the present castle: one arch is above a hundred foot diameter: a cascade of water falls from a great lake down some stone steps into the canal that runs under it.

The new palace is a vast and magnificent pile of building; a royal gift to the high merit of the invincible duke of Marlborough; the lofty hall is painted by Sir James Thornhill; the salon by la Guerre: the rooms are finely enriched with marble chimney-pieces and furniture, but more by the incomparable paintings: many of Rubens’s best and largest pieces; that celebrated one of himself, his wife, and child, among others; Vandyke’s king Charles I. upon a dun horse, of great value; and the famous loves of the Gods, by Titian, a present from the king of Sardinia. The gallery I admired beyond any thing I have seen, lined with marble pilasters and whole pillars of one piece, supporting a most costly and beautiful entablature, excellent for matter and workmanship: the window frames of the same, and a basement of black marble quite round. Before it is stretched out a most agreeable prospect of the fine woods beyond the great valley: it is indeed of an admirable model: this, and what is of the most elegant taste in the whole house, is of the duchess’s own designing. The chapel is not yet finished, and which I doubt not will be equal to the rest. The garden is a large plot of ground taken out of the park, and may still be said to be part of it; well contrived by sinking the outer wall into a foss, to give one a view quite round, and take off the odious appearance of confinement and limitation to the eye, and which quite spoils the pleasure and intention of a garden: within, it is well adorned with walks, greens, espaliers, and visto’s to diremarkable objects that offer themselves in the circumjacent country. Over the pediment of this front of the house is a curious busto in marble of the French king, bigger than life, taken from the gate of the citadel of Tournay. The orangery is a pretty room. At the entrance hither from the town, her grace has erected a noble triumphal arch to the memory of the duke, and has projected a vast obelisk to be set in the principal avenue in the park, whereon is to be inscribed an account of his great actions and ability in council, and in war. Near the gate is the house where our famous Chaucer was born: methinks there was somewhat poetical in the ground that first gave him birth, and produced these verses, which I ask pardon for inserting, upon a subject which his genius only could be equal to:

Through the park we crossed again the Akeman-street, which runs all along with a perfect ridge made of stone, dug every where near the surface: it bears between north-east and east: it is a foot-path still through the park with a stile, and a road beyond it by which it passes to Stunsfield, Ro. town.Stunsfield, where are marks of an intrenched work, once a Roman station: and in the place they found (the 25th Jan. 1712.) a most curious tesselated pavement, for bulk and beauty the most considerable one we know of: it was a parallelogram of thirty-five foot long and twenty foot wide, a noble room, and no doubt designed for feasting and jollity: in one of the circular works was Bacchus represented in stones properly coloured, with a tiger, a thyrsus in his hand enwrapped with vine leaves. This admirable curiosity deserved a better owner; for the landlord and tenant quarreling about sharing the profits of showing it, the latter maliciously tore it in pieces. When the earth was first laid open upon its discovery, they found it covered a foot thick with burnt wheat, barley and pease: so that we may guess upon some enemy’s approach it was covered with those matters to prevent its being injured, or was turned into a barn and burnt.

We crossed a foss called Grimesditch, the vallum eastward: it goes by Ditchley wood and house, which takes its name from it. Dr. Plot does not sufficiently distinguish this from a Roman road: it was doubtless some division of the ancient Britons: the country is all a rock of rag-stone. Many good seats of the nobility hereabouts; Cornbury lord Clarendon’s, Ditchley lord Litchfield’s, duke of Shrewsbury’s at Hathorp, new built of stone very beautiful. Juniper grows plentifully hereabouts. At Chadlington is a square Roman camp. At Enston is a pretty curiosity in water-works, cascades falling down artificial rocks overgrown with waterplants, chirping of birds imitated, many pipes of water, secretly to dash the spectators, and fancies of that kind.

Chipping-Norton must have been a great trading town by the number of merchants, as they are there called, buried in the church under brasses and inscriptions: others of alabaster: and the name of the place signifies it, as our Cheapside, equivalent to market, to buying or cheapening. There are marks of a castle by the church, which probably was demolished in the time of king Stephen. Lord Arundel, beheaded in the barons wars, lived in it: a place called the Vineyards near it. Roman coins are frequently found here. The church is a good building of a curious model, the south porch hexagonal, and a little roof over it supported by a stone arch: under the choir is a charnel-house full of the ruined rafters of mortality. A priory was here near Chapel on the heath: the Talbot inn was religious: stories of subterraneous passages thence to the priory. A well lately found in the ploughed fields at Woodstock hill, a mile south of this place, and more such like in the fields. Hereabouts they call camps barrows, meaning boroughs.

Hence we rode to see Rowldrich stones, a very noble monument; the first antiquity of this sort that I had seen, and from which I concluded these works to be temples of the ancient Britons. I crave leave to reserve its description for another work. In the clay upon these hills they dig out cornua ammonis, small, but very prettily notched: they are nothing but clay hardened in the shell. Further on, in Tadmerton parish, we rode through a large round camp on the top of a hill doubly intrenched, able to contain a great army. Bloxham has a very fine church, the steeple of an odd make, but pretty enough. At Broughton near Banbury is the seat of the lord Say and Seal.

Banbury was a Roman station, called Branavis. That master builder the bishop of Lincoln, Alexander, built the castle anno 1125, I doubt not but upon the Roman fortification: he enlarged it and built it after the mode of those times, taking in a huge space of ground with a wall, towers and ditch: within he made another work upon one side, where were the lodgings, chapel, &c. A small part of the wall of this is only now left, of good hewn stone; but the ditch went along the middle of the adjacent street, and houses are built by the side of it, out of its ruins, as people now alive remember: in the civil wars it received new additional works, for there are plain remains of four bastions; a brook running without them. Many Roman coins and antiquities have been found here. There is an inn called the Altarstone inn, from an altar which stood in a nich under the sign: this had a ram and fire carved on it, as they say: part of the stone is still left: I imagine this was originally a Roman altar: they tell us William the Conqueror lay at this inn. The town is a large straggling place and dirty, though on a rock with sufficient descent: one would think it was walled about in most ancient times. Here are three gates, though of later make. The tower of the church, they say, was much higher than at present: the church is of great compass: three rows of pillars, but of too slender a manner, which makes them all lean awry, and different ways: many additions have been made to it: a touch-stone monument of the family of Cope: other old monuments ruined. The bridge is long, consisting of many arches. Branau supercilium aquæ seems well to answer the etymology of the Roman name, as Mr. Baxter has it: The stone of this country is mixed with sand. Black gloves is a great manufacture here. Kenric the West-Saxon king, anno 540, routed the Britons at this place.

We went over the vale of Red-horse and Edghill, which presents us with a most extensive prospect, steep to the north: on the top of it, at Warmleighton, is a large and strong intrenchment of a circular but irregular form, said to be Danish by the inhabitants, but seemingly more ancient and British. Descending the hill for a mile, we rode through Radway, and over the field between it and Kyneton, where the famous battle of Edghill was fought: we were shown some of the graves of the slain. At Tellisford we crossed the Foss-way.

Warwick is situate on a rock, a fine new-built town, having been almost wholly burnt down in 1694. The church and lofty tower is new built, except the east end, which is old and very good work: there are a many fine brass monuments of the earls of Warwick and others, as the earl of Essex; TAB. IX. 2d Vol.many chapels and confessionaries, with other remains of ancient superstition: in the chapter-house on the north side is a tomb of the lord Brook. The castle stands upon the river Avon, over which is a stone bridge with a dozen arches: across is a large stone-work dam, where the water falls over it as a cascade, under the castle wall, which is built on a rock forty foot above the water. It overlooks the whole town and country, being delicately situate for pleasure and strength, fenced with a deep mound and strong embattled double walls and lofty towers: there are good apartments and lodgings next the river, the residence of the lord Brook: on one side of the area is a very high mount: we were shown the sword and other gigantic reliques of Guy the famous earl of Warwick. The priory on the north-east side of the town overlooks a pleasant woody vale: there are a great many curious original pictures, by Vandike and other good hands, of kings, queens, famous statesmen, persons of learning both at home and abroad. A mile out of town, on the side of a hill, is a pretty retired cell, called Guy-cliffe: in an old chapel there is a statue of Guy eight foot high: the fence of the court is intire rock, in which are cut stables and out-houses. We saw the rough cave where they say Guy died a hermit.

Coventry is a large old city: it was walled about: the gates are yet standing. It is adorned with a fine and very large church and beautiful spire a hundred yards high. There is another good church in the same yard. The cross is a beautiful Gothic work, sixty six foot high: in niches are the statues of the English kings. At the south end of the town stands a tall spire by itself, part of the Grey Friers’ conventual church. The town-house is worth seeing: the windows filled with painted glass of the images of the old earls, kings, &c. who have been benefactors to the town. Here the famous lady Godiva redeemed the privileges thereof almost at the expence of her modesty, the memory whereof is preserved by an annual cavalcade. These verses are wrote in the town-house.