Information
Defoe drew from his varied experiences as wholesaler, government spy and journalist to write a description of the counties he travelled through. Blending anecdotes with formal descriptions Defoe wrote in a style which is enjoyable and which made his 'Tour' “a particular and diverting account of whatever is curious and worth observation” in Great Britain. His description of Faversham does not however present the town in a very endearing way, portraying the inhabitants as a group of rude and boisterous smugglers:
Quotations
The late King James II was embarked for his escape into France, ran on shore, and being boarded by the fishermen, the king was taken prisoner; and I must mention it to the reproach of the people of Feversham , let the conduct of that unfortunate prince be what it will, that the fishermen and rabble can never be excused, who treated the king, even after they were told who he was, with the utmost indecency (…)using him with such indignity in his person, such insolence in their behaviour, and giving such opprobrious and abusive language, and searching him in the rudest and most indecent manner (…). I know of nothing else the town is remarkable for, except the most notorious smuggling trade (…) in which they say the people hereabouts are arrived to such a proficiency, that they are grown monstrous rich by that wicked trade
Place | Extract |
| Faversham | Defoe drew from his varied experiences as wholesaler, government spy and journalist to write a description of the counties he travelled through... |
| Queenborough | Defoe’s impressions of Queenborough, recorded in his 'A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain' (1722-5), seem to have been coloured by his scandalized discovery that such a lowly place was entitled to two members of parliament, the same as more populous and economically important districts of London... |
| Ramsgate | Not many of the towns of east Kent detained Daniel Defoe for long in his ‘Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain’(1724-6)... |
| Sheerness | More than a quarter of a century after Samuel Pepys and his fellow naval administrators had recommended the fortification and expansion of Sheerness as a dockyard, one of Daniel Defoe’s impressions of it in his 'Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain' (1724-6) was of a newly emerging town heavily shaped by its naval identity and conscious of its role in the defence of the Medway towns and London... |
