Returning to England in early 1711, Toland decided to settle in Epsom, ‘where I continue the whole summer and whither I withdraw frequently in winter’. The house he occupied, which was a gift from political patrons at some indeterminate date, provided him with a place to escape the din of city life, while still permitting him ‘In two or three hours time [to] … be at London, whenever I will, at my ease; and if I have no business in town, I can receive all the publick news as well, and almost as soon, at EPSOM’. He clearly fell in love with the location, for he decided shortly after to write a merry description of the town ‘in a manner different from his ordinary style’ and one which set aside ‘a secret meaning (as is usual in political letters)’. Indeed, he was explicit in suggesting that the town was a place where, ‘A Tory does not stare and leer when a Whig comes in, nor a Whig look sour and whisper at the sight of a Tory. These distinctions are laid by with the winter suit in London’. What the town represented to Toland was the possibility of retreat and revival. He imagined how he might ‘resign (from that minute) my share of all titles and preferments to such as are in love with hurry, pay court to envy, or divert themselves with care, to such as are content to square their lives by the smiles or frowns of others, and who are resolv'd to live poor that they may die rich’. He revelled in how the countryside around the town provided him with the source of therapeutic excursions. ‘No where’ he told his female correspondent Eudoxa, ‘has Nature indulg'd herself in grateful variety, more than in this Canton’. He imagined himself as a rustic for whom no pleasure was greater than ‘the lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the piping of shepherds and the whistling of hinds, [having] charms, for which the men of noise and business, with the men of pleasure falsely so call'd, have neither taste nor ear’.