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Development of Tunbridge Wells
yourself too much disturbed by a letter of salutation," Viscount Chaworth wrote to Sir John Coke from there, July 13, 1634, "I shall advertise you herein that I found this place indifferent full of them that complain of several infirmities." * " It is many years agone," Sir Kenelm Digby addressed Sir Robert Harley, February 1, 1642, " since I was beholding to you for a medicine (of tincture of strawberries) for the stone, which first your brother my Lord Conway procured of you for me, and afterwards yourselfe gave me more particular directions for the making use of it; and truly, I have found more good in it than in any medicine I have taken, unlesse I should putte the constant yearely taking of the Spaw or Tonbridge waters under the tytle of a medicine." Not long after this was written, Edmund Waller, while staying in 1645 at Penshurst close by, in one of his poems to his " Sacharissa" (Lady Dorothy Sidney), who will not be kind to him, made the first allusion in polite letters to "The Wells":—
1 Hist. MSS. Com. Reports—Cowper MSS., II. 58.
2 Hist. MSS. Com. Reports—Marquis of Bath's MSS.t II. 77.
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