The coastline from Folkestone onwards decreases in height, but Dungeness lies ahead, known as the most dangerous of all headlands between the North Foreland and Spithead. As we drop Folkestone astern and cruise along the pleasant shore, with the high range of the Downs behind it inland, one passes Hythe of historic memory, now a clean, modern town, though no longer a port; and behind it Saltwood, with the ancient tower breaking through the encompassing woods. Here it was that the murder of the great Archbishop Thomas A’Becket was planned, and hence the murderers, headed by one Ranulf de Broc, owner of the stronghold, set forth on their dastardly mission. It was to the castle also they afterwards returned to find (so tradition tells us) that the table set in the great hall for their entertainment and refreshment declined to bear the viands, whilst the torches kindled to give them light turned sickly and flickered out.
Soon Dungeness looms ahead with the wide stretching Romney Marsh, beloved in ancient times by outlaws, and in later ones the rendezvous of the most desperate and successful of the Kentish smugglers, on our starboard quarter. Reminiscent of Holland, and having its saving dyke in Dymchurch Wall three miles long, it was in the early years of the last century a wild desolate expanse so given over to the smugglers that they were powerful enough to make one parson at least give them the freedom of one of the aisles of his church as a store for contraband. But the parsons of those days were not above receiving a “tub” which had never paid duty for themselves, and a bale of silk or lace for their wives and daughters.
The Romney Marsh has been, from time immemorial, the refuge of malefactors in the broadest sense of the word. Here, in Saxon times, doubtless hid recalcitrant thanes and vassals; and in the Middle Ages those who had put themselves outside the protection of the Church, or had broken the law; later, some of the pirates of the Cinque Ports, whose predatory expeditions at times were on the point of embroiling not only the fisherfolk of the adjoining coast upon which they preyed, but even the two nations to which they belonged; afterwards hunted Royalists took refuge here until some opportune moment for escaping to France presented itself: then, later still, in the early Georgian era, those who adhered to the Stuarts met and plotted and drank “to the King over the water”; and, but a little later still, escaped prisoners of war were secreted in its midst till the smugglers, who were generally concerned in their escape, could arrange on some favourable night to convey them across Channel. What stirring romances could be written of the dark and secret doings of Romney Marsh?
Once round Dungeness, however, and Rye is before one. It is not nowadays much of a port, indeed, as such its greatness has departed, leaving it a quaint, old-world place, with an air of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries hanging about it. It is almost impossible to believe that once it was a flourishing and important place, one of the seven head ports—not merely a “limb” of the Confederacy—and capable as late as the reign of George II of affording a haven of refuge for large ships.
There is delightful country in the immediate vicinity, for Rye is at the confluence of the valley of the three streams, the Rother, Tillingham, and Brede. In the architecture of Rye, if one has ventured into its harbour, which is nowadays difficult of entrance and exit, one finds some delightful bits of almost medieval date: hoary roofs and towers and moss-grown walls. It is difficult to believe that once the “French walked the streets, slaying all they could meet with, afterwards burning the houses.” Just as they did, we may remark, at Sandwich, Winchelsea, Yarmouth, Dartmouth, and many another town upon our south coast. No one who comes into Rye Haven should leave it without going up to Rye town and inspecting the ancient parish church, which shares with several others the distinction of being the largest in England. In it is the oldest clock in the country, and the North Chapel is an exquisite piece of thirteenth-century work.
Off Rye and Winchelsea took place on August 29, 1350, the great fight between the fleet of Edward III and the Spaniards (L’Espagnols sur mer), in which the latter, superior in size and numbers, were defeated with a loss of twenty-six out of their forty large ships. From Winchelsea Queen Philippa anxiously watched the varying fortunes of the day. She had more than an impersonal interest in the result, for in the thick of the manœuvring vessels, where the fight was fiercest, we are told was the ship on which were the King himself and his two sons.
The Winchelsea at which William the Conqueror landed in 1067, with its seven hundred houses and more than two score inns, was swept away by the sea, although the site on which it stood was destined once again in the course of the centuries to emerge as dry land. The commencement of the disasters which ultimately overwhelmed the town is thus described by an anonymous (?) author much quoted by Grose and others: “In the month of October, 1250, the moon, upon her change, appearing exceeding red and swelled, began to show tokens of the great tempest of wind that followed, which was so huge and mightie, both by land and sea, that the like had not been lightlie knowne, and seldome, or rather never, heard of by men then alive. The sea forced contrarie to his natural course, flowed twice without ebbing, yeelding such a rooring that the same was heard (not without great wonder) a farre distance in from the shore.” We are further told that the sea was strangely phosphorescent, and that the mariners could not save their ships, “three tall ships perishing without recoverie, besides other smaller vessels.” And, moreover, several of the churches and some three hundred of the houses were “drowned.” Though, doubtless, frightened, the inhabitants did not desert their stricken town. Perhaps they would have been wiser had they done so, for thirty-seven years later, on February 4, 1287, the remaining portion, to all intents and purposes, was (to use Holinshed’s quaint word) “drowned.”
The new Winchelsea, which has, in a measure at least, come down to us at the present time, was speedily commenced under the patronage of Edward I himself. Into this town, and through its then prosperous streets, marched 3,000 French three-quarters of a century later, in 1359, “to its great harme and terrible destruction.” This was not by any means the last time that the hereditary enemies of the inhabitants of the Cinque Ports landed, for they were successful then, and again in 1378, after having been driven off two years before by the militant Abbot of Battle Abbey with great loss. These French attacks were, to a large extent, retaliatory measures for those of the men of Winchelsea; and at last, in consequence of the piratical doings of the latter, we are told by Pennant, Prince Edward attacked the town, took it by storm, and put to the sword all the chief offenders, saving the rest, to whom he granted much better terms than they had any right to expect.
Now Winchelsea is suffering from the gentle decay which seems to envelop rather than attack places which have once been ports and are so no longer by reason of Nature’s want of kindliness. Amidst its pleasant houses and pretty gardens, in which all flowers that love the sun and the salt air of the coast flourish amazingly, one seems to breathe the atmosphere of somnolent repose, tinctured with the salt which rests upon lip and cheek to tell of the not far distant sea which once lapped the foot of its now vanished castle.
Winchelsea’s fine church, dating from Edward I’s time, was unhappily destroyed by the French, who left only the chancel and side aisles standing. This fragment, isolated in the midst of a green God’s acre, is, however, well worth visiting. The roof beams of the building are said to have been made from the timber of wrecked or dismantled ships, “stuff the like of which is seldom nowadays found,” as a well-known antiquary puts it.