Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/76

 Percy, one of the ganpowder-plot conspirators, a relation of the Abingdons'; and supposed by Guthrie, though without foundation, to have written the letter which occasioned the suspicions of James, and the discovery of the plot.

Thomas Abingdon, above spoken of, whom punishment rendered happy, by turning his attention from the distraction of politics to the tranquillity of literary pursuits.

Mary his wife, daughter of Lord Morley, and sister to Lord Monteagle; to whom she wrote the letter we have so often mentioned, which is now preserved in the Paper-office, Whitehall.

The dirty town of Droit wich would not have detained us a moment, had it not offered to our notice those natural curiosities, the salt springs or brine-pits, which have been known and made an article of manufacture for above one thousand years last past. Till the year 1689, this process had been monopolized by a few grantees under the crown, who raised a large annual in- come from their pits in Upwich and Netherwich: but at that time a Mr. Steynor, a bold speculator, and deeply skilled in the law of property, determined to break through a system which had neither equity nor reason for its foundation, and sunk some pits upon his own ground. The