Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/56

 hence it is observable, that in all places (as at Tewksbury) where the women are actively and lucratively employed, there is more comfort, decency, and cleanliness, in the mansions of the working order, than can be found in those manufacturing towns, where are opportunities of larger earnings, but all on the side of the men:—the remark was made by V, who with the gallantry of a foreigner added, that the sex had as yet neither found their level nor their value in this country. The town is a corporate one, and returns two members to parliament, under a charter granted by James II. which confirms and extends the privileges of its more ancient deed of incorporation, and vests the elective franchise in the freeholders and freemen of the body corporate, which amounts to nearly six hundred, a number that almost renders Tewksbury an open borough. Its name is said to be a corruption of Dodo, the founder of the first monastery here; an etymology which puts us in mind of the French wit's derivation of lacquey, or the English one's of pipkin.

Many vestiges of antiquity are scattered through the town of Tewksbury; amongst the rest a compleat specimen of the domestic architecture of the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, usually called the Brick-nog building, with projecting stones and pyramidal roof. Its population amounts to