Illustration: The Smaller British Islands.
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            Having now at last set sail from Ireland, I will steer my course towards those islands that lie scattered upon the coast of Britain, and take a survey of them. If I durst imagine myself able, or could confide in my own sufficiency, I would try to make some discoveries in every one of them; but since my design is only to give some light into their antiquities, such of them as are of little note, I shall not much trouble myself with; but such as are more eminent, I will land at, and make some short stay in, that now at last, I may be so happy, as to restore them to the honour of their respective antiquities.

            That this voyage may be regular and orderly, I will take my course from Ireland towards the Severn Sea; and from thence (after I have doubled the utmost point of Scotland) towards the German ocean; from hence, by the British sea, which reaches as far as Spain, I will sail on as directly as I can; but not without some apprehension, that this ship of mine, with me at the head of it, will now and then touch upon rocks of error, or else sink in the depth of antiquity, for want of skill in the pilot to direct it. However, I am embarked now, and must go through;, Adventure is the best sea-captain, says Antiphilus; and whoever follows me, may perhaps make a more successful voyage.

            But first, it will not be foreign to my business, to set down that which Plutarch reports of these islands in general, from a fabulous relation of Demetrius.  He says, that about Britain there were many small and desolate islands, some of which were called the isles of demons, or demigods; and that he himself, at the command of the Emperor, sailed to the nearest of those places for curiosity's sake, where he found few inhabitants, but those that were all looked upon as sacred. Not long after he arrived there, the air and weather grew foul and tempestuous, and there followed a terrible storm of wind and thunder, which at length ceasing, the inhabitants told him, that one of the demons or demigods was deceased. A little after he says also, that in one of those islands, Saturn is detained prisoner, fast asleep, and in the custody of Briareus; that sleep is instead of chains and fetters, and that he has several of those daemons about him for attendants. Thus our fore-fathers, as we do at this day, took the liberty of telling monstrous strange things of places afar off, which is a good safe way of romancing.

            In the Severn, there first appear two small islands; the one being plain and level, is called Flat Holm, in the same sense with Planarie in Italy; the other being steep, is called Steep Holm, and in British Reolic; but the Britons termed them both echni, as we do now holmes; for so the Saxons always called a grassy plot of ground enclosed with water. Formerly they were famous for nothing else but for the Danes that harboured there; and for the burial of Gualch, a Briton of great piety, whose disciple Barruch has given name to the island Barry in Wales, as we learn from an ancient monument of the church of Llandaff; and thus the island itself has done the same to the Barrys, a noble family in Ireland. Hard by this lies Sully, a small island upon the coast of the ancient Silures, a name, whereof it retains some remains to this day; as a small town over against it in Glamorganshire likewise does. Yet I will not affirm this to be the very Silura, or Insula Silurum, which Solinus speaks of; because there are islands of the same name, though at some further distance.

            From hence we arrive at Caldey, in British Inispir, pretty near the shore; and over-against it, more into the sea, is Lundy, which faces Devonshire, being fourteen miles distance from the promontory Hertness. This is reckoned the larger of the two, and yet is not much above two miles broad, and a mile long; so pent in with rocks, that there's no coming to it but by one or two places. Here has formerly been a fort, the ruins of which, as also the remains of St. Helen's Chapel, are visible. Heretofore it has been ploughed, as is manifest from the furrows; but now all the gain and profit made of it arises from the sea-fowl, which flock in great numbers hither. No trees grow in it except stinking elders, to which the starlings flock in such numbers, that one can hardly come at them for dung. But why should I launch out into such observations, since Sir Thomas Delamere Kt. has thus described it, when he tells us, how poor King Edward the 2nd endeavoured to shelter himself here from his troublesome wife, and rebellious barons, who pursued him with great fury and threatening. Lundy, (says he) is an island situate in the mouth of the Severn, about two miles over every way, full of good pasture, and well stocked with rabbits, pigeons, and starlings, (Alexander Necham calls them Ganymede's birds) which are breeding continually. Though it is encompassed with the sea, yet it affords the inhabitants good fresh spring water. It has only one way to it, which is so strait that two men can hardly walk abreast in it. On all sides else the horrible steep rocks make it inaccessible. Our historians hardly make mention of it, but upon the account of William de Marisco, a sad mischievous pirate that infested these coasts in the reign of Henry the Third. In Edward the Third's time it was part of the estate of the Lutterels.

            From hence we arrive at Grassholm, Skokholm, and Skomer, situated in the very bend or turning of Pembrokeshire; grass and wild thyme grow plentifully in them. I was heretofore of opinion, that this Skomer was the Silimnus in Pliny; but since, I have had some reason to be of another mind. For this Silimnus in Pliny may probably from the resemblance of the two names be the Limni in Ptolemy; that this is the same that the Britons called Lymen is clear from the word itself; it goes by the name of Ramsey at this day, and lies over-against the bishopric of St. David's, to which it belongs, famous in the last age for the death of Justinian a holy man, who in that fruitful age of saints retired hither out of Bretagne in France, and devoted himself wholly to God in a hermit's course of life, was at last slain by a servant, and canonized for a martyr. In the history of his life, this island is often called Insula Lemenia; which word, together with the name of Limen (as the Britons call it) shows the greatness of their absurdity, who would have the island next above it to be Ptolemy's Limnos, called at present by the Welsh Enlli, and by the English Bardsey, that is, an island of birds. One would think from the signification of the word, that this is that which Ptolemy calls Edri, and Pliny Andros, or Adros as some copies have it. For ader among the Britons signifies a bird; and so the English in the same sense have afterwards called it Bardsey. The name Enlli is more modern, derived from a certain religious person, that lived a hermit here. For this very isle (which on the East shoots out in a high promontory, but on the West is champaign<146> and fertile) has been formerly inhabited by so many saints, that without reckoning Dubritius and Merlin the Caledonian, no fewer than 20000 saints are said by ancient histories to lie buried here. Next to this is Mona or the Isle of Anglesey; called by the Britons Mon, Tir-Mon, and Inis Dowyli, that is, the dark island; and by the Saxons Monege: whereof I have already spoken.

            Near Anglesey, lies these three lesser islands, Moyl Rhoniad, that is, the Isle of Seals, to the North-west. This was unjustly withheld by certain usurpers from the bishops of Bangor, to whom it belonged; till Henry Deney Bishop of Bangor (as we read in the history of Canterbury) recovered it by the assistance of a  fleet and army, in Henry the Seventh's time. To the East lies Ynis Ligod, that is, the Isle of Mice; and under that, Prestholm, i.e. The Isle of Priests; where I saw nothing but the tower steeple of St. Cyriac's chapel, visible at a great distance. The neighbours report incredible things of the infinite breed and number of sea-fowls here; and what's no less strange, that a causeway went from hence through the very sea, to the foot of that huge mountain Penmaenmawr for the convenience of such as came in pilgrimage hither. I take no notice of Lambay, a small island over-against this upon the Irish shore; though alum has been sought for in it at great charge by the metalmen.

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