A most true report of the miraculous moving and sinking of a plot of ground, about nine Acres, at Westram in Kent, which began the 18. of December, and so continued till the 29. of the same month. 1596.  
The true figure of the foresaid plot of ground, containing nine Acres.  
From A. to A. signifieth the carrying way at the North end, which is sunk in one place 100 foot, and in an other place 65. foot.  
From D. to C. signifieth two pits of Alders, which are driven up to the top of a Hill 4. perches a piece.  
From B. to B. signifieth the old foot path, which is driven from F. to E. 8. perches.  
E. signifieth a hole sunk in the plain ground thirty foot.  
From H. to H. signifieth a standing Hedge of 28. perches long, which is removed 7. perches out ●his place.   

The names of certain of those which were eye witnesses for the testimonial of the truth hereof, under their hands.  

Richard Bostocke Esquire, justice of peace.  
james Austen Gentleman.  
john Studley, Vicar of Westram.  
Wil Holton Physician.  
john Gainsford Gent.  
Erasmus Gainsford Gen.  
Gyles Gainsford Gen.  
john Dawling the elder, Gen.  
john Dawling the younger, Gen.  
Richard Reynold  
William Reinold Gen.  
William Holmeden Gen.  
john Larmoth Gen.  
Thomas Chapman Gen.  
William Cam Gen.  
Robert Lighe yeoman.  
john Chapman of Cockam, yeoman.  
Richard Welles yeoman.  
Thomas Tollor yeoman.  
Giles Browne yeoman.  
Thomas Stacy yeoman.  
Richard Stidowle yeoman.  
Ralph Stacy yeoman.  
Thom. Chapman of Holdfast, yeoman.  
john Constable yeoman.  
john Chapman of Shots, yeoman.  
john Stone yeoman.    

To the right Honourable my singular good Lady and Mistress, the Lady Margaret, Baroness Dacre of the South, john Chapman your poor servant, wisheth much increase of honour in this world, and eternal joy and felicity in the world to come.  
RIght Honourable, my singular good Lady and Mistress,  
whereas I find that ingratitude and forgetfulness of due reverence to be performed of servants toward Masters & Mistresses, is among all sorts most odious; as contrariwise, diligence to please, and reverent dutifulness toward their said Masters, etc. is in them a thing most laudable: as among many other, we read of one Mucronius, servant afore time to a poor Artisan named Hargabus, who being afterward called to be a Senator, did still for ever yield such reverence unto his said old poor Master, as thereby he did not only give cause of great joy, to Hargabus, but it was esteemed in him a great praise and increase of honour, to be so dutiful to him that had brought him up. In regard whereof, I your ladyships servant, being desirous to make known to the world the obedient duty & serviceable mind that I bear to your honour, have thought good (for want of better opportunity, to present your Ladyship with the education of the plotting and publishing of this miraculous work of God, touching the strange moving of certain ground, at Westram in Kent, whereof, I with divers others, have been witnesses. Humbly beseeching your good Ladyship, to accept this as a poor new years gift, at the hands of him, who prayeth unto God that your honourable Ladyship may enjoy many happy new years: and is, and always will be ready and diligent to please your Ladyship to the uttermost of his power.  
Your ladyships faithful and obedient servant. john Chapman.   

An admonition to the Christian Reader.  
AS it is most evident to them that are of the household of faith, that in the beginning our most gracious God did by his mighty power create and fashion the whole frames of the heavens above, and all things else on earth beneath: so also it is no less manifest, but that by his wonderful and unsearchable providence he doth from time to time, preserve and keep, govern & guide, altar and change, and every way dispose thereof according to his own good will and pleasure, and as it seemeth best to himself for the glory of his blessed name, and the good of his chosen children: dear to him in Christ jesus, to whom therefore be praise & glory now and evermore, Amen. These things (I say) are most apparent unto men: And yet notwithstanding the bright eye of his Almighty majesty continually piercing into our hearts, and sounding deeply the unseen secrets of men's deceitful thoughts, doth by his divine wisdom see and perceive, that many there be who have their continual conversation among his children, and do sometimes suck the fat of the earth more plentifully than they do, who yet like unto bruit beasts, destitute of reasonable souls, can go no further in contemplation of spiritual matters than their bodily senses, common unto beasts, which do lead and direct them: And therefore these carnal men (as the Apostle termeth them) have as he saith, no taste nor sense, of divine matters, nor any perceiving of those things that do appertain unto God: yea there be some of them so far from having any reverent estimation and religious feeling of his gracious majesty, and especially from acknowledging of his fatherly goodness and watchful providence, sustaining them and theirs in their daily necessity of life and living, as that unto themselves, and in their own hearts they say plainly (and that the Lord himself doth know) that there is no God at all.  
This damnable impiety, although it do deserve, as a most blasphemous contempt of the sacred deity, to be no ways tolerated, but to be most sharply censured, and rigorously punished, either with the fearful fire that fell upon Sodom, or the sudden gaping of the ground that swallowed up Corah, or the swarming lice & vermin which did feed upon the flesh of that presumptuous Herod, and devoured his loathsome carcase alive, yet such is the great patience and long suffering of the Lord, as that he doth vouchsafe to forbear, to execute his sharp justice upon the same for a time, and in the mean while (as one pitying this natural blindness) doth most bountifully (as it were) put forth his glorious hand, and therein doth hold out such lamps of light as may clearly shine unto us, and be (as the star to the wisemen was at Christ his birth) sufficient guides to lead us out of this gross darkness of error and ignorance, and bring us to find him where he is, if we apply ourselves as they did to follow the course and footing of the same going before us, even here upon the earth: For seeing we be thus hardly tied unto our outward senses, and so strongly pressed down with the heavy sway thereof, as that we cannot pass higher than the reach of them: and so resting thereupon, become altogether unapt to mount a fit, and ascend by faith to discern him sitting above in the height of the heavens, in his invisible majesty, he doth not yet leave us here, and forsake us so: but to the intent our dead and benumbed consciences might even by these our natural senses be sufficiently convinced in this point, and further our humane dullness (if it may be) stirred up, to have some more lively feeling, forcible perceiverance, and effectual consideration of that supreme essence, who is God all sufficient, unto all, and in whom we live, move, and have our being, he doth therefore vouchsafe, to descend in some sort unto us, and offereth here upon earth, unto our eyes a sensible testimony of his most certain being, and of his mighty power discernible by his strange works, daily done in our sight, far above the common course of nature, and beyond the policy and strength of man: And to the intent we may understand so much of them, he doth in doing them, call unto us by his prophet, willing us to look upon them, and to consider them reverently, while he saith, Come and behold the works of God, for he is terrible in his doings toward the sons of men: For if they were in deed well weighed as they ought to be, & duly considered one with an other: the order and course of them one way, and the variety and alteration of them an other way, is such, as may easily induce and persuade us to know and believe, cofesse and say, verily there is a God that ruleth the earth: And among sundry other his works that may be of this force, he commendeth unto us in place where some especially, namely these (that as the prophet saith,) One while he turneth running rivers into a wilderness, and the springs of waters into dry ground, and converteth fruitful land into barrenness, for the sins of them that do dwell thereon. An other while he turneth the wilderness into pools of water: And a dry land into water springs. Whereto we may add, that sometime he hurleth down hills, and maketh them to become low valleys, and withal exalteth the low valleys, and maketh them to become high hills: Which extraordinary effects when they come to pass, they are not to be altogether neglected, nor attributed, as the manner of some is to do, unto blind chance, casualty, and fortune, or else to the only force of natural causes measurable by philosophical reason: but as it appeareth by the holy prophet, they are to be esteemed as matters of especial mark, and worthy to be regarded as heedful documents, which have their first original and beginning of their motion, proceeding from the great fountain of God's divine providence, not working idly therein, but tending unto some especial end and purpose: and chiefly this, that men beholding and seeing the same, should thereupon take occasion as it appeareth by David, with trembling and fear to think upon that mighty majesty, who is the first cause and causer thereof, and then to reverence his holiness, who reigning triumphantly in heaven above, doth yet by these his works on earth, show himself terrible unto the sons of men, and thereby causeth them to remember him perforce, that so one good thought in them, may as fire increasing fire, beget an other, before all be quite quenched. This then (as it seemeth) being the purpose and counsel of the holy Ghost, by such his works to stir up in us a more strong and fruitful impression of the great deity▪ we need not now travail far to seek out some precedents thereof, in strange countries for the satisfying of ourselves by the testimony of our own eyes: for lo, the Lord doth now at this instant in some sort present the same unto us at home in our own native country, and that in diverse places by common report, but especially in one place more abundantly than else where, as may sufficiently appear by this discourse ensuing, faithfully set down by them who are very 〈◊〉 persons, and do testify that which they themselves 〈◊〉 know to be true.   

A most strange and true report of certain ground, containing nine acres and upward, which was sunk, removed, and carried out of his place, eight perches, with the trees standing thereupon, at Cockam hill, in the parish of Westram in Kent, about fifteen miles distant from London.  
IN the parish of Westram in Kent, about a mile from the Town Southward, not far from the East side of a certain great and common high way, called Cockam Hill, leading from London towards Buckhurst, & other parts of Sussex, about that coast lieth a certain Farm possessed by one master Robert Heath, an honest Gentleman, dwelling at Sandersted in Surry, and presently tenanted by one Giles Browne an honest yeoman. Among sundry parcels of ground belonging thereto, in the midst of that Farm are two closes lying together, saving that they be separated with a standing hedge, of holies, Ashes, Hazels, Willows and Alders growing thereon: the situation of which, and namely of the upper close, till the 18. day of December last passed, was after this sort. The upper face of it lay somewhat adant, and upon the shoot of an hill, but not so much, but that a bowl being cast up against the hill might easily have lain & settled without tumbling back again perforce: otherwise it was reasonably level for the most part: for it hath been usually mowed, and within these five years hath been sowed three times with three sundry kinds of grain: first with wheat, secondly with Barley, and thirdly with Oats: A little above the North end thereof, lying somewhat higher than the rest, hard adjoining to the foot of a very high and stéep hill, there was a certain carrying way for Cart and Wain, to the Tennaunts use, and beneath that, toward the midst of it, a foot path did cross to the close: Between the said carrying way, and the said foot path, were two standing pits, the one being about six foot deep of water and more, the other twelve foot at the least, and about four perches over in breadth, having sundry tufts of Alders and some Ashes growing in the bottoms of them: the ground on the south side of the said pits, lay mounted higher than the upper face of the water, about ten foot.  
Again, from the great high hill lying at the upper part of the ground whereof we spoke before, two very little gozels' passed down along Southward through the close, their water Courses being divided asunder at the upper end, about the carrying way, twelve perches, and about the midst twenty eight perches: All which earth of the said closes within the said gozelles, and about an Acre more in breadth one way, and eighty perches in length another way, began the said eighteen day of December to alter and change form and fashion, and that very diversly from day to day, for the space of eleven days together, after this manner.  
First on the said 18. day, the said Tenant Giles Browne going in the morning toward that Cart way, with purpose to pass along it, to a barn standing beyond it, when he came to that part of it which lay about the head of the gozelles, he found it for xii. perches long to be sunk there down right six foot and a half deep, by measure taken by himself and other. The next morning being the ninetéenth day, he coming thither again, found it to be sunk sixteen foot more than it was the day before. The third morning being the twentieth day, he came again, and then found it to be sunk about eighty foot more at the least. And then from that day forward, that great trench of ground lying partly in these two closes, and partly in sundry other, containing from the carrying way southward in length (as is before said) about eighty perches, and in breadth in some place twenty eight and where it was narrowest xii. perches, began with the hedges and trees thereon to lose itself wholly from the rest of the ground lying round about it, and withal to move, slide, and shoot southward, not with any sudden shot, but creeping by little, and little, so as the motion and stirring thereof was not discerned nor perceived, by them that were presently standing upon it and working about it, but only by the sundry effects that followed, as the cracking of the roots of trees, the brushing of boughs, the noise of the hedge-wood breaking, the gaping of the ground, and the riving of the earth asunder, the falling of the torn furrows and huge trenches after it, some four foot deep, some six and some seven and more, whereby there were made in it at the least not so few as eleven thousand furrows, riffs, cracks, and clefts in diverse places here and there. This moving and carrying of the ground southward continuing still both by day and night for the space of eleven days together, sliding aslant, sometimes as it was noted, fourteen handfuls by measure, in one hour and a half did wonderfully alter and change the whole face of that land: for in some places thereof, the hinder ground coming faster forward (as it should appear) then the former ground did give way unto it, caused it to swell up in round hillocks like unto graves, the green turf remaining still whole and unbroken above: In other places the hinder ground came so violently, as that it did not only tear the green turf above, but also did rise and lift up itself, and did roll and tumble ever the other as it were waves or surges and so stayed as standing butts, and at the last the whole plot was so toused, torn and rend, and withal the green turf so tattered and turned up side down, as that there is scant so much as one perch together of all this ground left whole with the grass upon it uncrackt.  
The ground of the two water pits even from the very muddy bottoms whole, with a great rock of stone under the same are not only removed out of their places and carried forward toward the South, at the least four perches a piece, with their tufts of Alders still standing upon them, but withal, they are mounted up aloft, and become hills, standing yet to be seen with their sedge, flags, and black mud upon the top of them still, higher than the upper face of the water is now (which they have forsaken) by at the least nine foot: and into the place from which they are removed and risen, other ground which lay higher before, is descended and come down, receiving the water lying now upon it, as it did before upon the other.  
Moreover, in one place of the plain field, there is a great Hole made by sinking of the earth, to the depth of thirty foot at the least, being in breadth in some place, two perches over, and in length, five or six perches.  
Likewise there is a hedge of 30. perches long▪ removed and carried Southward, with his trees and all, seven perches at the least: And of these trees some do still stand, and grow upright, and some are quite overthrown, covered and buried, with the folding of the earth running upon them, and almost both the ends of the said hedge are sunk and covered wholly with the earth: the East end of it four perches long, the West end five perches long.  
Many other alterations there be of trees that be sunk and removed out of their places, some five perches, some six: as namely, one Holly tree is driven seven perches out of his place, and yet it standeth upright still, and a great Alder is torn root and all cut of the ground, and carried from his place four perches, and there it lieth, the top turned down to the ground.  
Beside this, there was one piece of ground of half an Acre, which in times past did lie up shooting in between the two fields: this piece now, with an hedge row of trees standing upon it, is slipped quite away Southward, from between those two closes: and they two before severed, are now come together & joined as one, and in their coming, are tumbled over a summer hedge, & withal two other hedges, and a shaw of hazel trees, and bushes, which did sever them, are now driven together on heaps at the Southend.  
Sundry other sinkings there be in divers places, one of sixty five foot, an other of forty seven foot, an other of thirty four foot.  
By means of all which cofusion, it is come to pass, that where the highest hills were heretofore, there the deepest Dales ●ée now. And where the lowest Dales were then, now the ground lieth mounted highest.  
The footpath spoken of before, is now carried out of square eight perches at the least, the lower end of this ground is carried southward in breadth three perches over into two meadows, whereof one is in the possession of an other man called Thomas Toller.  
Finally the whole measure and content of this breaking ground, was at least nine acres seven day works and four perches, on the twenty ninth day of December when this figure and measure of it was taken, as here ye see it set down: And since that time it cracketh and cleaveth daily more and more on all sides round about it.  
Among other things touching this matter, this also is especially to be considered, that whereas by the great abundance of water, and continual rain which have fallen so many months together of late, sundry great bowrnes, and violent streams have broken out in many places of this land, and at the least seven such within xii. miles of this place every way, the least whereof is able to drive a corn Mill, where seldom or never any such have been before, and that this ground lieth (as we have said) under a high hill that might occasion some such issue, yet there hath no extraordinary course of water broken out upon it, nor near unto it by a mile any way, neither have the small springs thereof, during all this wet weather, been any thing increased to speak of. In so much as the two little gozelles mentioned before, being they that do carry most water over this roving ground, are neither of them so great, but that their streams might at any time all this year (and so many still) easily pass through an auger hole of an Inch and half broad. Which I speak to this end, that the strange carriage, moving, driving, and displacing of huge mass of earth, and the heaving up of the valleys and low pits, with the great roots thereof raised and mounted unto hills, with the trees thereupon, cannot be imputed to the abundance of water enforcing it as the cause thereof, as some perhaps otherwise would imagine and suppose.  
The whole manner of the strange confusion of this plat cannot be described according as it is but there hath (by report of the Farmers and others) come to see it at sundry times, from London and other parts of the country four thousand people since it first began: to whom it hath seemed to be a very strange and fearful sight, giving occasion unto some of them, to think upon that great opening of the earth that shallbe in the latter day when she shall yield up her dead, that be in her to come to the resurrection, to other to think upon that fearful gaping of the ground wherein Corah and his company were devoured.  
And to the intent the reader may not think himself to be abused in this report by some vain devised fable, sundry of the neighbours and inhabitants, and they of the best credit dwelling thereabout, who have been at it, and are eye witnesses thereof, have been content here unto to give their testimony, by subscribing their names at the beginning of this book.  
FINIS.