ABSTRACT

Travel is ‘requisite to…accomplish a gentleman’, declared William Ramsay in 1669, and Obadiah Walker, writing about the gentleman’s education, recommended travel abroad to:

learn the Languages, Laws, Customes, and understand the Government, and interest, of other Nations…To produce confident and comely behaviour, to perfect conversation… To satisfy [the] mind[s] with the actual beholding such rarities, wonders, and curiosities, as are heard or read of. It brings us out of the company of our Relations, acquaintances and familiars; making us stand upon our guard, which renders the mind more diligent, vigorous, brisk, and spiritfull. It shews us, by consideration of so many various humours, and manners, to look into and form our own; and by tasting perpetually the varieties of Nature, to be able to judge of what is good and better. And it is most useful for those who by living at home, and domineering among servants, & c. have got a habit of surliness, pride, insolence, or other resty and slovenly custome. As also for those, who are entangled with unfitting companions, friends, loves, servants. For those who are seized upon with the vices of their own Countrey, such with Drinking, rusticity, sourness in conversation, laziness, & c. and then, every one must be sent into the place most proper to reforme him.1