for Poole, at this time the main builders there were doing so well in
the Newfoundland trade that they did not enter for the Admiralty
contracts. The threat of invasion and the bathing fancy of a King, ¹
raised Portland and Weymouth to eminence at the turn of the
century; and Portland's place in the scheme of naval defence was
enhanced by the construction of the breakwater, 1847-75: com-
pleted in the 1890's by the addition of two new breakwaters to make
secure against torpedo attack. In the south of England naval
bases and watering places grew side by side and were some com-
pensation for the loss of industry to the North--Portsmouth,
Portland, Plymouth: Bournemouth, Weymouth, Torquay; and above
all of these in maritime significance was the great port of South-
ampton, with its superb tidal system and ideal situation vis-à-vis
Europe. But Southampton rarely enters into the Newfoundland
story.

Dorset was never an industrial county par excellence. Over the
centuries it was a rich pastoral county with strong interests in
maritime enterprise. It lived in an atmosphere of piracy,
privateering and potential invasion, as did Devonshire also--though
the latter, officially, was at once more powerful and law-abiding.
Somerset, an Old-Country Arcadia, was in a more sequestered
position--"the flower of all the West Country," the saying went,
with rich, well-watered soil and ample rainfall. Rich in agriculture,
it was richer still in social life; and the clergy, parish priests and
monastic foundations (while these remained) were the centre of it.
Towns grew up around their great parish churches. The glow of
Glastonbury illumined the whole of Wessex. Fifteenth century
Glastonbury to eighteenth century Bath was progress at a price;
and Henry Hunt, the radical rebel farmer of Upavon, Wilts, exposed
the heaviness of it--poverty in the cottage, and the tortures of
Ilchester gaol. The solitary cell, flogging, and loading with irons
were frequent punishments as late as 1821: a cat of nine tails in the
open air would have been more merciful.

The schools inherited a little portion of the monastic wealth, but
the bulk of it passed into lay hands, and the new industrial merchant
class of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries too often com-
bined progressive business with abuse of corporate property. The
pleasantest feature was the love of sport in all classes, which in the

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