DEAL, a market town, seaport and municipal borough in the St Augustine’s parliamentary division of Kent, England, 8 m. N.E. by N. of Dover on the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901) 10,581. It consists of three divisions—Lower Deal, on the coast; Middle Deal; and, about a mile inland, though formerly on the coast, Upper Deal, which is the oldest part. Though frequented as a seaside resort, the town derives its importance mainly from its vicinity to the Downs, a fine anchorage, between the shore and the Goodwin Sands, about 8 m. long and 6 m. wide, in which large fleets of windbound vessels may lie in safety. The trade consequently consists largely in the supply of provisions and naval stores, which are conveyed to the ships in need of them by “hovellers,” as the boatmen are called all along the Kentish coast; the name is probably a corruption of hobeler, anciently applied to light-horsemen from the hobby or small horse which they rode. The Deal hovellers and pilots are famous for their skill. Boat-building and a few other industries are carried on. Among buildings the most remarkable are St Leonard’s church in Upper Deal, which dates from the Norman period; the Baptist chapel in Lower Deal, founded by Captain Taverner, governor of Deal Castle, in 1663; the military and naval hospital; and the barracks, founded in 1795. The site of the old navy yard is occupied by villas; and the esplanade, nearly four miles long, is provided with a promenade pier. The golf-links is well known. At the south end of the town is Deal Castle, erected by Henry VIII. in 1539, together with the castles of Sandown, Walmer and Sandgate. They were built alike, and consisted of a central keep surrounded by four lunettes. Sandown Castle, which stood about a mile to the east of Deal Castle, was of interest as the prison in which Colonel Hutchinson, the Puritan soldier, was confined, and is said to have died, September 1664. It was removed on becoming endangered by encroachments of the sea. The “captain” of Deal Castle is appointed by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1111 acres.
Deal is one of the possible sites of the landing-place of Julius Caesar in Britain. Later in the period of Roman occupation the site was inhabited, but apparently was not a port. In the Domesday Survey, Deal (Dola, Dale, Dele) is mentioned among the possessions of the canons of St Martin, Dover, as part of the hundreds of Bewsborough and Cornilo; it seems, however, from early times to have been within the liberty of the Cinque Ports as a member of Sandwich, but was not continuously reckoned as a member until Henry VI., on the occasion of a dispute as to its assessment, finally annexed it to their jurisdiction.
In the time of Henry VIII. Deal was merely a fishing village standing half-a-mile from the sea, but the growth of the English navy and the increase of trade brought men-of-war and merchant ships in increased numbers to the Downs. Deal began to grow in importance, and Lower or New Deal was built along the shore. The prosperity of the town has ever since depended almost entirely on its shipping trade. In 1699 the inhabitants petitioned for incorporation, since previously the town had been under the jurisdiction of Sandwich and governed by a deputy appointed by the mayor of that town; William III. by his charter incorporated the town under the title of mayor, jurats and commonalty of Deal, and he also granted a market to be held on Tuesday and Saturday, and fairs on the 25th and 26th of March, and on the 30th of September and 1st of October, with a court of Pie Powder. The Cinque Ports were first represented in the parliament of 1265; the two members returned by Sandwich represented Sandwich, Deal and Walmer, until they were disenfranchized by the act of 1885.
DEAL. (1) (A common Teutonic word for a part or portion, cf. Ger. Teil, and the Eng. variant “dole”), a division or part, obsolete except in such phrases as “a great deal” or “a good deal,” where it equals quantity or lot. From the verb “to deal,” meaning primarily to divide into parts, come such uses as for the giving out of cards to the players in a game, or for a business transaction. (2) (Also a Teutonic word, meaning a plank or board, cf. Ger. Diele, Dutch deel), strictly a term in carpentry and joinery for a sawn plank, usually of pine or fir, 9 in. wide and 2 to 4½ in. thick. (See [Joinery].) The word is also used more loosely of the timber from which such deals are cut, thus “white deal” is used of the wood of the Norway spruce, and “red deal” of the Scotch pine.
DEAN (Lat. decanus, derived from the Gr. δέκα, ten), the style of a certain functionary, primarily ecclesiastical. Whether the term was first used among the secular clergy to signify the priest who had a charge of inspection and superintendence over two parishes, or among the regular clergy to signify the monk who in a monastery had authority over ten other monks, appears doubtful. “Decurius” may be found in early writers used to signify the same thing as “decanus,” which shows that the word and the idea signified by it were originally borrowed from the old Roman military system.
The earliest mention which occurs of an “archipresbyter” seems to be in the fourth epistle of St Jerome to Rusticus, in which he says that a cathedral church should possess one bishop, one archipresbyter and one archdeacon. Liberatus also (Breviar. c. xiv.) speaks of the office of archipresbyter in a manner which, as J. Bingham says, enables one to understand what the nature of his duties and position was. And he thinks that those are right who hold that the archipresbyters were the same as the deans of English cathedral churches. E. Stillingfleet (Irenic. part ii. c. 7) says of the archipresbyters that “the memory of them is preserved still in cathedral churches, in the chapters there, where the dean was nothing else but the archipresbyter; and both dean and prebendaries were to be assistant to the bishop in the regulating the church affairs belonging to the city, while the churches were contained therein.” Bingham, however, following Liberatus, describes the office of the archipresbyter to have been next to that of the bishop, the head of the presbyteral college, and the functions to have consisted in administering all matters pertaining to the church in the absence of the bishop. But this does not describe accurately the office of dean in an English cathedral church. The dean is indeed second to the bishop in rank and dignity, and he is the head of the presbyteral college or chapter; but his functions in no wise consist in administering any affairs in the absence of the bishop. There may be some matters connected with the ordering of the internal arrangements of cathedral churches, respecting which it may be considered a doubtful point whether the authority of the bishop or that of the dean is supreme. But the consideration of any such question leads at once to the due theoretical distinction between the two. With regard to matters spiritual, properly and strictly so called, the bishop is supreme in the cathedral as far as—and no further than—he is supreme in his diocese generally. With regard to matters material and temporal, as concerning the fabric of the cathedral, the arrangement and conduct of the services, and the management of the property of the chapter, &c., the dean (not excluding the due authority of the other members of the chapter, but speaking with reference to the bishop) is supreme. And the cases in which a doubt might arise are those in which the material arrangements of the fabric or of the services may be thought to involve doctrinal considerations.
The Roman Catholic writers on the subject say that there are two sorts of deans in the church—the deans of cathedral churches, and the rural deans—as has continued to be the case in the English Church. And the probability would seem to be that the former were the successors and representatives of the monastic decurions, the latter of the inspectors of “ten” parishes in the primitive secular church. It is thought by some that the rural dean is the lineal successor of the chorepiscopus, who in the early church was the assistant of the bishop, discharging most, if not all, episcopal functions in the rural districts of the diocese. But upon the whole the probability is otherwise. W. Beveridge, W. Cave, Bingham and Basnage all hold that the chorepiscopi were true bishops, though Romanist theologians for the most part have maintained that they were simple priests. But if the chorepiscopus has any representative in the church of the present day, it seems more likely that the archdeacon is such rather than the dean.
The ordinary use of the term dean, as regards secular bodies of persons, would lead to the belief that the oldest member of a chapter had, as a matter of right, or at least of usage, become the dean thereof. But Bingham (lib. ii. chap. 18) very conclusively shows that such was at no time the case; as is also further indicated by the maxim to the effect that the dean must be selected from the body of the chapter—“Unus de gremio tantum potest eligi et promoveri ad decanatus dignitatem.” The duties of the dean in a Roman Catholic cathedral are to preside over the chapter, to declare the decisions to which the chapter may have in its debates arrived by plurality of voices, to exercise inspection over the choir, over the conduct of the capitular body, and over the discipline and regulations of the church; and to celebrate divine service on occasion of the greater festivals of the church in the absence or inability of the bishop. With the exception of the last clause the same statement may be made as to the duties and functions of the deans of Church of England cathedral churches.