“Ah! there the sky is of an azure hue,
And aureate glow the yellow sands;
The ocean darkens to a deeper blue—
And everywhere are German bands.
“I know an arbour where the jasmines twine,
Where creepers hang in folds and tresses limp,
Where gay convolvuli and eglantine
Dispute the odour of the fragrant shrimp.
“There, where the spider weaves his silken net,
And earwigs crawl, and caterpillars creep,
Will you and I together hie, my pet,
For there they furnish teas extremely cheap.”
Pegwell Bay, as you will clearly perceive on maps, is a very considerable inlet. It marks, indeed, that nook in the coast-line where the old Wantsum Channel and the river Stour flowed along past Minster and Sarre, and emerged at Reculver, thus forming the Isle of Thanet. Tracking round from Pegwell and its shrimpy arbours, along the low shores, we come at Cliff’s End to the “Sportsman” inn and Ebbsfleet, and, turning to the right, will presently find St. Augustine’s Cross.
Ebbsfleet is a place of the greatest historic interest; a spot where many landings that contributed largely to the long story of England have taken place. Where these fruitful fields now spread there ebbed and flowed, until well within the period of established history, those waters of the Wantsum which received the Stour and other streams, as shown in old maps, and divided Thanet from the mainland by a navigable channel with numerous creeks, or “fleets.” An enormous mass of archæological writing has been expended upon the discussion of the exact site of Ebbsfleet. It has been sought to place it at Stonar, nearer Sandwich, among other places; but popular tradition has always pointed to the site occupied by the modern memorial cross. The channel of the Wantsum, affording quiet anchorage from stormy seas and safe landing-places would obviously be the place to be made for by both friends and hostile visitors. Here, accordingly, tradition places the landing of the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa in A.D. 449, thirty-nine years after the departure of the Roman garrison, coming in reply to Vortigern’s appeal to them to help him against the Picts and Scots. Following that first coming of those fierce men of the sæxe and the battleaxe were many other landings, few specifically mentioned in history. They came then, not as allies, but as enemies of the enfeebled Britons who had originally hired them to do their fighting. Thus we read that in A.D. 465 “Hengist and Æsc fought against the Welsh at Wippidsfleet, and there slew twelve Welsh Ealdormen, and one of their own Thanes was slain whose name was Wipped.”
For the original name of Ebbsfleet we have a fair choice. It was written “Wippidsfleet,” “Hypwine’s fleet,” and “Ippedeflete”; but the essential name has survived through all the centuries.
It was 148 years after the first landing of the pagan Saxons that Augustine came ashore here, A.D. 596.
“Augustine’s arrival was, it is more or less historically certain,” says Sir F. C. Burnand, who will have his joke, even if ill-timed and painfully hammering it out, “in the last of the summer months, since he is invariably alluded to in ancient records as ‘our august visitor.’” This is really lamentable.
Augustine was by merest chance the missioner to England. Gregory the Great, the Pope who sent him on the mission, had himself, when Deacon, intended to convert the heathen in our island. Gregory was not of the sour religious type, but something of a humorist, and a punster and torturer of words after Burnand’s own fancy, only he did it better. The story is well known, how, seeing slaves from England sold in Rome, he asked from what country they came.
“They are Angles,” replied the dealer.