[2511] According to Chambers’s Ency., v, 1901, p. 296, Lomea has been identified with ‘Infera insula of the Romans’. The writer does not inform us by whom infera insula was mentioned.
[2512] Part i, 1900, p. 337.
[2513] Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts of Kent, pp. 20-1.
[2514] Hist. Maps of England, p. 2.
[2515] Richard Lilburne (Topographie ... of ... Kent, 1659, pp. 262-3), alluding to the well-known legend as to the origin of the Goodwin Sands, says, ‘the most probable relation of the rise of the same is thus. Goodwin ... was ... owner of a great quantity of flat Lands in the County (neer the Isle of Thanet) defended from the sea by a great wall, which lands afterwards (in the year 1099) was parcell of the possessions of the Abbot of St. Augustine (but reteyned the name of Goodwin ...), and that Abbot, being then also owner of the Rectory of Tenterden, and having begun the building of this steeple ... the thoughts, and actions, of him, and his agents were so set upon the finishing of that work, that they neglected the care of watching, and preserving the aforesaid wall, and (3. of November in that year) the sea broke over, and ... drowned the aforesaid lands (overwhelming the same) with a light sand ... and the place thereby obteyned the name of Goodwin Sands ... and thus (accidentially) this Tenterden steeple is said to be the cause of Goodwin Sands.’
[2516] Hist. of Deal, 1864, p. 106.
[2517] See p. 524, supra.
[2518] Coast Erosion, 1899, p. 12.
[2519] Archaeol. Journal, xlii, 1885, pp. 284-5. According to Mr. Clement Reid (Archaeologia, part ii, 1906, p. 285) ‘the relative level of sea and land in the south of England appears to have remained unchanged’ since ‘late Neolithic times’. See, however, Addenda, p. 740.
[2520] There is not much force in Professor Boyd Dawkins’s argument (Early Man in Britain, p. 483), that an island on the site of the Goodwin Sands would not have escaped the notice of Ptolemy. Ptolemy does not mention Sheppey (or else Thanet) and other islands.