His narrations are very strange and pleasant; but
so many yeares since have made me almost forget all. He sayes there
is incomparable fruite there, and that it may be termed the paradise
of the world. He says that the spondyles of the backbones of the huge
serpents there are used to sit on, as our women sitt upon butts. He
taught them to build hovels, and to thatch and wattle. I wish I had a
good account of his abode there; he is "fide dignus". I never heard of
any man that lived so long among those salvages. A ship then sayling
by, a Portughese, he swam to it; and they took him up and made use of
him for a seaboy. As he was sayling near Cornwall he stole out of a
port-hole and swam to shore; and so begged to his father's in
Wiltshire. When he came home, nobody knew him, and they would not own
him: only Jo. Harris the carpenter knew him. At last he recounted so
many circumstances that he was owned, and in 1642 had a commission for
a Captain of Foot in King Charles the First's army.
PART II. - CHAPTER II.
OF THE GRANDEUR OF THE HERBERTS, EARLES OF PEMBROKE.
WILTON HOUSE AND GARDENS.
[AUBREY'S account of the famous seat of the Pembroke family at Wilton,
and of its choice and valuable contents, will be found exceedingly
interesting. His statements are based upon his own knowledge of the
mansion before the Civil Wars, and upon information derived from
Thomas Earl of Pembroke, Dr. Caldicot, who had been chaplain to the
Earl's family, and Mr.
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