The church of Deal, dedicated to St. George the Martyr, and dating only from the time of Queen Anne, is just the type of building one would expect from that date: red brick, with factory-like windows and a cupola-crowned clock turret. But it is a good and well-proportioned specimen of its class. Something of the fine old salty flavour of the tarry-breeched sailors of Nelson’s day belongs to the two epitaphs that may be found against the walls. The first is to—
“John Ross and James Draper, Seamen, who were killed on board H.M.S. Naiad in defeating the French Flotilla off Boulogne in the presence of Buonaparte, 21st September 1811. Their Shipmates caused this Monument to be erected to the memory of these truly good Men, who so nobly fell in the just cause of their Country.”
The other reads:
“Sacred to the Memory of David Browne, late a Seaman on board his Majesty’s Ship Immortalité, who died of wounds received in action with the Division of the French Flotilla off Cape Blanc Nez, 23rd of October 1804. Likewise of James Wilson, William Terrent, John Dewall, and George Bacher, Seamen, who lost their lives on the same occasion. Of William Panrucker, Seaman, killed 6th Sept. 1804, John Egerton, Marine, killed 17th February 1804, and of James Redout, Seaman, killed 5th Nov. 1803. This is erected by their Shipmates. They were brave good Men and fell at that Post their Country had assigned Them.”
Deal, in the opinion of Cobbett, was “a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people. Great desolation of abomination has been going on here; tremendous barracks, partly pulled down and partly tumbling down, and partly occupied by soldiers. Everything seems upon the perish. I was glad to hurry along through it, and to leave its inns and public-houses to be occupied by the tarred and trowsered, and blue-and-buff crew whose vicinage I always detest.” The “tarred and trowsered crew” in his time were very largely smugglers of the most ingenious type. They smuggled in the most incredible places, and it is even recorded that the Deal boatmen wore bustles, in which they packed vast quantities of tea and tobacco. The visitor of to-day, noting that the Deal boatmen are already provided by nature with a very extensive area in the region on which bustles are worn, will smile at the quaint picture that must have been presented by these bold dealers in contraband.
Julius Cæsar landed at Deal, in his invasion of Britain, B.C. 55, and again in the following year; and Perkin Warbeck chose the same spot in 1495. The low, shingly beach afforded an easy landing-place; and hence, when invasion was expected in the reign of Henry the Eighth, Deal was one of the earliest places to be fortified.
THE QUAINT FORESHORE OF DEAL.
History speaks with many voices on the subject of Henry the Eighth. That is partly because history is the sport of partisans, and partly because the character of that King is so complex. The view that he was all bloodthirsty tyrant and sensualist is easily taken. His amazing marriages, and still more amazing dissolutions of marriage, contribute largely to that estimate of him. But there were several Henrys in that one portly body. There was the avaricious, greedy Henry, own son of the mean Henry the Seventh; the vain and luxurious and spendthrift Henry; the proud and cruel Henry, a true Welsh Tudor; and the statesman and patriot, whose existence few acknowledge. Whatever were his faults and errors, Englishmen to this day owe more to Henry the Eighth than to many a later monarch. He it was who established the Royal Navy, who had the courage to break with Rome and to free England from the deadly embrace of that Church; and he spared no effort to arm his country against the political alliances the Pope sought to direct against it.
Says Hall, the Chronicler: