“Lieut. Thos Edgar of the Royal Navy
who departed this life Oct^r 17th 1801
Aged 56 years.
He came into the Navy at 10 Years of age
was in that memorable Engagement
with Adm^l Hawk & sail’d round the World
in company with the unfortunate
Captain Cook of the Resolution
in his last Voyage when he was killed
by the Indians at the Island of O whie
in the South Seas the 14th Feby 1778
Tom Edgar at last has sail’d out of this World
His shroud is put on & his top sails are furld
He lies snug in deaths boat without any Concern
And is moor’d for a full due ahead & a Stern
O’er the Compass of Life he has merrily run
His Voyage is Completed, his reckoning is done.”
Here too, is an epitaph on a smuggler, one George Walker, who was shot in 1819:
“Let it be known that I am clay,
A bace man took my life away;
Yet freely do I him forgive.
And hope in Heaven we both shall live.
“Wife and children I’ve left behind,
And to the Lord I them resign.
I hope he will their steps attend
And bring them to a happy end.”
The ancient Chamberlain’s accounts of about 1475 show that misdemeanants had the very worst of times at Lydd. First we find it ordered “That anyone found cuttyng or pikeyng purses, or other goods of lytille value, be brought to the high strete and there his ere nayled to a post or cart whele.” Then follows: “Paid for naylyng of Thomas Norys is ere 12d” There was a grim quality about the justice of those times. A knife was handed to the offender, so that he might release himself by cutting off his ear whenever he chose. The term of imprisonment therefore depended entirely upon himself.
The conservative qualities of Lydd may perhaps be judged by the fact that the Mayor, Alderman Edwin Finn, brewer, has been elected to the office thirty-one years; thus far outdistancing the record of FitzAilwyn, Mayor of London twenty-two years.
LYDD CHURCH.
Lydd is the place whence Dungeness, four and a quarter miles distant, is most readily arrived at. The best-advised explorers go by train. Others, who walk it, generally wish they had not. It is a specious and alluring road, starting fairly enough, and at the end of two miles still fairly easy walking; but thenceforward all road disappears. Even the track vanishes, and the pedestrian plunges wistfully on, through loose shingle, guiding his course by the more seaward of the two lighthouses. Knowing ones walk along the railway line; but that is not an inspiriting exercise.