[THE CINQUE PORTS]
The association of certain towns on the south-east shores of England for the purpose of coast defence is of great antiquity. In the oldest Cinque Ports charter on record, granted in the sixth year of Edward I, reference is made to documents of the time of Edward the Confessor, indicating an origin before the Norman Conquest.
In early times there were, as the name implies, five ports included in this confederation, viz.: Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Romney and Hythe. Almost immediately after the Norman Conquest, Winchelsea and Rye were added with status equal to the original towns. Thereafter the precise title of the corporation was “the five Cinque Ports and two ancient towns.” In addition to these seven head ports, there were eight corporate members, viz.: Deal, Faversham, Folkestone, Fordwich, Lydd, Pevensey, Seaford and Tenterden, and no less than twenty-four non-corporate members.
The jurisdiction of the Cinque Ports extended from Reculver on the north coast of Kent to Seaford on the south coast of Sussex. It will be noticed that at least three of the corporate members are situated at some little distance from the sea coast. Faversham, Fordwich, and in a greater degree Tenterden are inland towns, although two are placed on river-courses which afford access to the sea.
As will presently be seen, men as well as ships were contributed by the Cinque Ports for the defence of the realm, and Tenterden received its charter in 1449, in order that it might assist Rye to discharge its obligations. Hence it is that we find a corporate member situated so far from the coast.
The Cinque Ports were established primarily for the defence of the sea-board on the south-east of England, but in the course of time their purpose was extended. In these early times, when England possessed no regular navy, it was the men of the Cinque Ports who guarded our seas. They provided, in return for many privileges they received from the Crown, almost the only form of naval defence which England possessed until the reign of Henry VII. Until that period nearly all the men and ships which guarded our shores from the enemy were furnished by the Cinque Ports, and even after the time of Henry VII they rendered important assistance to the regular navy.
The men of the Cinque Ports seem to have carried on a certain amount of privateering at various times, but there have been times when their skill in seafaring and their undoubted courage have been employed in work of the utmost value in the defence of England. A celebrated occasion occurred in the year 1217, when Hubert de Burgh, having selected the best seamen of the Cinque Ports, set out with about sixteen large ships and twenty small ones to attack the approaching fleet of Louis the Dauphin of France, the numbers of which were no less than eighty large and many smaller vessels. Hubert de Burgh had grasped the important principle of naval strategy that in order to free his country from the danger of invasion, it was above all things necessary to attack and destroy the enemy’s force at sea.
Although opposed by such unequal numbers the Englishmen skilfully secured a windward position, bore down upon the enemy as they shaped their course for the English coast, threw quicklime in their eyes, poured into the enemy a volley of arrows from the long bows for which the English were famous, and scattered and destroyed the enemy’s ships, so that only about seventeen escaped; fifty-five were captured, and the rest were sunk. The credit of this signal victory in an engagement at sea which may rank as almost the first in English history, certainly the first subsequently to the time of King Alfred, belongs to the men of the Cinque Ports.
The strength of the Cinque Port forces in the fourteenth century may be gathered from the fact that at the Siege of Calais (1347), when the fleet was called out to assist in the blockade and to defend the Channel, the following ships and men were furnished by the Cinque Ports: