FROM THE NORTH
FORELAND TO
PENZANCE

PORTSMOUTH. H.M.S. ST. VINCENT

FROM THE NORTH
FORELAND
TO PENZANCE

BY CLIVE HOLLAND · ILLUSTRATED BY
MAURICE RANDALL

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
NEW YORK: DUFFIELD & COMPANY
MCMVIII

All rights reserved

To the Most Noble
THE MARQUESS OF ORMONDE
K.P., P.C., Commodore of the Royal Yacht
Squadron, with his Permission, this Book of
the South Coast is inscribed

PREFACE

In the following pages, dealing with the most important or most picturesque of the harbours and seaports of the South Coast from the North Foreland to Penzance, no attempt has been made either to give “guide book information” which can be easily obtained elsewhere; or to afford technical sailing directions, soundings, or nautical information of the type to be found in such books as Cowper’s admirable “Sailing Tours,” “The Pilot’s Guide,” or in the Admiralty Charts. Rather has it been the object of the author to deal with the picturesque side of the various places described, and to give something of their story and romance, both past and present.

That the coastline covered by the present volume has much of interest few will deny. It is, indeed, the one which has played the most strenuous and historic part in the history of our Island Kingdom.

In times of war it has experienced all the terror and excitement which comes in the train of outgoing battle fleets and incoming victorious galleons, men-of-war, and privateers. In times of peace it has known not a little of the romance of wrecking, smuggling, and the pure joy of life which is borne inland by soft, salt breezes and cleansing winds. Of its beauty those can tell who like ourselves have coasted along its varying shores of high chalk cliffs, shingle, sand, and fretted granite. Indeed, where salt water meets land there must ever be something worth seeing, recording, and depicting.

A special element of interest attaches to the work of the artist whose sympathetic pictures adorn the book, in that for many years he has been associated with the sea and the Southern Coast, and has voyaged many thousands of miles upon the great waters. His work will speak for itself, but it seems singularly appropriate that a practical yachtsman should illustrate a work of this character.

Of necessity the writing of a volume like the present one, covering in a comparatively brief space a large field, has entailed much research as well as knowledge gained by visits, in some cases on many different occasions, to the places dealt with and described. And it is equally impossible to avoid mentioning and saying a great many things which have been said before, and in a sense using material already contained in existing books dating from Domesday, Leland, Hakluyt, and Hals to the most recent of modern times, and also county histories.

The author’s thanks are more especially due to Messrs. A. & C. Black for kind permission to make use of material, the inclusion of which was unavoidable, relating to the history of Dorset ports and havens in particular, previously appearing in somewhat different form in his book “Wessex,” of which they hold the copyright; to W. K. Gill, Esq., for permission to make use of material, collected by him from various ancient sources, contained in his interesting booklet “Sketches of the Past of Poole”; to the proprietors of the Homeland Association Ltd., for a like permission to make use of the substance of matter contained in several of their excellent “literary” guides, more especially relating to Sussex, Devon, and Cornish ports; to Commander the Hon. Henry N. Shore, R.N., the author of that interesting and exhaustive volume “Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways” for valuable help and information; and to a number of friends and others for information willingly afforded on the occasion of our visiting the various places described.

Amongst other books which have been consulted for details regarding ancient historical events of a local character and customs may be mentioned those of the Rev. John Prince, of Berry Pomeroy, Devon; Jonathan Couch’s “History of Polperro”; Mr Arthur H. Norway’s “History of the Post Office Packet Service between 1793 and 1815”; Mudie’s “History of Hampshire”; “The Illustrated History of Portsmouth”; “The History of the Civil War in Hampshire”; J. D. Parry’s “Coasts of Sussex” (1833); Mr Montagu Burrows’s “Cinque Ports”; “The Complete History of Cornwall”; and many smaller pamphlets published from 1700 to 1845. Use has also been made of the old files of “The Hampshire Independent,” “The Dorset County Chronicle” and other local newspapers, and the Records of various towns.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

From the Foreland to Penzance

Chapter I
The North Foreland—Ramsgate—Deal—Dover—Hythe, and some other Cinque Ports

The great headland, famous as the North Foreland, dazzling white on a bright summer’s day, and grey when the weather is cloudy; capped with green turf which is by turns, according to the season, the greenest and the least green in England, is familiar to all who have gone down Channel from the Thames estuary, and to many who have only crossed it. On the summit of this historic and impressive cliff, at whose foot, by turns, lap the waves of a quiet sea and rage the surges of winter’s gale, stands the lighthouse which has an interest to all seafarers beyond its saving power and guidance, in that it is in fact the oldest along the coast. Though much altered and enlarged, its present tower is substantially the same as the one commenced in the reign of the Merry Monarch in 1663. So that for nearly two and a half centuries the light has shone forth over the waste of waters as one old writer says “for the guidance of mariners, as a token of human kindness, and incidentally to the glory of God.”

Many historic events have taken place off the North Foreland, but none perhaps of greater moment than the fierce naval battle between the English and Dutch fleets on June 2, 1653, each numbering close upon 100 vessels, though the latter had some numerical superiority. Then in sight of “all who thronged the headland the great fight went on between the big shipps until the Dutchmen were beaten.”

The English had already gained a victory over the Dutch off Portsmouth a few months before, and now the fleet under the command of Blake, Monk, and Deane, whose name as a naval commander, is, we imagine, almost unknown to the majority of his countrymen of the present day, inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Dutch, six of whose best ships were taken, eleven sunk, and the remainder driven to take shelter in Calais Roads. This engagement was one of a series which took place in the home waters during the years 1652–1675.

On one’s way round to Ramsgate one passes Broadstairs—now a favourite summer resort—which in the middle of the sixteenth century was a place of some importance, having ninety-eight houses, eight boats and other vessels from two to eighteen tons, with forty men employed in the seafaring industries; and its famous church of Our Lady, on passing which in ancient times we are told vessels “lowered their topsails and wafted their ‘ancients’ in salute.”

Ramsgate Harbour, however, is not an ideal place in which to make any prolonged stay. It is not commodious; nor is it distinguished by what is termed “every modern convenience.” The outer basin is little more than mud at low water, and the inner—well, most people avoid docks if there is a chance of having fresh and sufficient water under a yacht’s keel. But Ramsgate itself is an interesting and historic town, and is situated on the Isle of Thanet, which literally teems with romantic memories of the past. Those of the sea rovers of the Cinque Ports, the sturdy seamen of the Elizabethan age, the bold and daring smugglers of the Georgian and early Victorian eras.

Ramsgate is undoubtedly of very ancient origin. Even in pre-Roman times it was probably a place of some importance and consequence. Indeed, the numerous remains which have from time to time been found in the neighbourhood, more especially on the East Cliff, go far to prove the contention that in the days of the Roman occupation it served as a kind of outer port or station to Rutupiae. Its position was such as to enable it to defy the silting up, as well as those other changes which were destined as the ages went by to stultify and destroy some of its immediate neighbours and sometime rivals. Though the haven afforded was too small and not well protected enough to attract to it any great measure of the trade that flowed up Channel to London from even early times, Ramsgate has for many centuries been a fishing port, and a place of some considerable moment to the Isle of Thanet itself. Even in the early years of the fourteenth century it was a town of some size, and it had one great possession in the fine old church of St Lawrence which dates from the reign of King John.

There are indeed so many romantic and historical memories connected with Ramsgate that the story of them is difficult to condense within reasonable limits. Just across the bay, in the meadows of a farm, more than thirteen centuries ago, landed St Augustine, a peaceful conqueror. Near this spot, six and a half centuries before, the world-conqueror Julius Cæsar had grounded his galleys, and his soldiers—fired by the example of a standard bearer—had leaped into the water, forcing a landing in the face of the menacing and oncoming Britons.

There in the year 597 amid the water meadows stood the Saint, with the River Stour flowing between him and the Saxon King who had come down to see what manner of man Augustine might be, but had “entreated the Saint to approach no closer lest he should be a magician and work the King ill” until he had satisfied himself that he (Augustine) was no wizard. The running water between in those times was held to be a sure bar to the exercise of magical arts. When the King had satisfied himself that the Saint and his followers were not to be feared he crossed over the river, and sat and listened to what they had to say. Every one knows the story. How St Augustine “came to stay.” How in the end the King who had received him with friendliness and hospitality was driven out of his own. And then, to come further down the ages, the ease-loving descendants of St Augustine and his monks were themselves told to depart by another King, less mild mannered and hospitably inclined than the Saxon Monarch of a thousand years before. “Bluff King Hal” would have none of them, though, perhaps, it was neither their morals (or want of them) nor their pride that chiefly induced him to make the clean sweep of them that he did.

Westward from the harbour and in the valley lies Minster, concerning the founding of which there is a monkish legend of some interest. After King Egbert had murdered his cousins and “buried them under his throne” he, doubtless fearing they might prove troublesome, was seized with remorse. As so often happened in those remote days his remorse, and desire that his lady cousin, whose brothers he had thus foully murdered, should forgive him, was turned to good account by Mother Church, who from history appears to have made a pretty constant practice of profiting by rich sinners and bleeding those who others bled. The lady in question agreed to consider the matter settled if the King would but give her (this was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s solution) as much land as a hind could run over, so that she might found a monastery to her murdered brothers’ memory. Egbert, who, tradition asserts, had been much disturbed meanwhile by ghostly visitants, agreed; and the religious house was duly founded.

The daughter of the foundress, named Mildred, ruled over the community, and afterwards was canonized. But the monastery was not destined to remain long undisturbed. A band of Danish pirates landed, attacked, and burned the institution to the ground, and carried off to a more secular life the prettiest of the virgin nuns they found incarcerated. Possibly some of them found their new circumstances less dull than their old life of seclusion. A little later Canute gave the land on which the monastery had stood to the Priory of St Augustine at Canterbury. Then arose a difficulty. St Mildred being long dead had been left by the Danish marauders where she lay buried. They had, indeed, no use for the bones of saints or dead womenfolk. And now the Abbot of Canterbury wished to remove the body to his church. The people of Thanet naturally opposed the idea. St Mildred was their most valued and cherished possession. Pilgrims came to visit her grave, and when pilgrims came there were material advantages accruing. The Saint herself appears to have refused this “translation” to Canterbury. But in the end she was not proof against the gentle and logical wooing of the Abbot of St Augustine’s, and she went away with him or he carried her off, whichever way one may read a story that is not quite clear in this regard. The men of Thanet followed to Canterbury with a view to recovering their property; but were unsuccessful, and St Mildred “did many wonderfull workes and miracles at that place.”

Richborough Castle hard by is a fine ruin, and has great interest for those to whom the dim and obscure ages of national history appeal. The remains of this old fortress of the time when Romans held sway in Britain are amongst the most interesting in the South of England. It has been frequently referred to by writers of that period, under its Roman designation of Rutupiae, and was the castle of an important town or settlement until the recession of the sea did away with its usefulness as a place of habitation for seafaring people.

One can well imagine the effect of its massive towering and threatening walls upon the Saxon pirates of the days when Rutupiae was in its prime, and formed, with the castle of Regulbium or Reculver, the defences and wards to the entrance of the then wide and navigable Wantsum. But like so many of the outposts of civilization of those latter days of Imperial Rome’s world-wide sway, it was destined to be abandoned. And when the last legion marched in A.D. 436 to the coast to depart over seas never to return, it was not long ere the invading Anglo-Saxon pirates took and sacked the great stronghold of Rutupiae, and practically destroyed its very fabric.

Ramsgate of late years has in a measure come to the front as a holiday resort, but to most seafarers along the coast it will always be the past of the town rather than the present that will possess abiding interest. Until comparatively recent years it continued to bear its share of the burdens attaching to the Cinque Ports; and even nowadays is in a measure under the control of Sandwich, its ancient head, and as a “vill” of the latter submits to the jurisdiction of its recorder. It is one of the ancient non-corporate members of the Cinque Ports.

In coming down Channel to Dover one passes several historic towns connected with the ancient Confederacy, consisting originally of Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, and Hastings, to which were afterwards added Rye and Winchelsea (making seven, notwithstanding which the old French and original name has always been retained), but none of these can nowadays be looked upon in the light of harbours. We may, perhaps, as well here as anywhere else whilst passing the old-time port of Sandwich, with its “limbs” Deal, Walmer, Kingsdown and Ringwold, spare a little space for a brief sketch of the Cinque Ports as a whole. The Confederacy, which came to be known under that designation, cannot fail to be of interest to all Britons as being the undoubted germ of the Royal Navy, in those far-off times when the Channel was a frequent battle-ground, and these ancient ports loomed large in history. Originally brought into existence by Saxon monarchs, they were afterwards constituted by William I and succeeding kings, who required them to supply ships for the defence of the coasts. The Charter dated 1278 of Edward I is the real basis upon which their liberties are founded. This charter, the earliest which has now actual existence, settled many outstanding grievances, and conferred several important new privileges in addition to confirming the old ones. The essential part runs “And it is by this deed made clear that they shall possess their liberties and acquittances henceforth in the fullest and most honourable manner that they and their forerunners have ever had in the times of the Kings Edward the Confessor, William I, William II, King Henry our great-grandfather, and the Lord King Henry our father, by reason of the Charters of these aforenamed kings, as those said Charters, in possession of the Barons.” Then follows a statement that these same ancient grants and Charters had been seen by the King.

There is, unfortunately, no space at our command to mention in detail the many interesting customs in connexion with the Cinque Ports. One of those most prized in the Middle Ages was the carrying of a pall or canopy of silk over the head of the King at the coronations, extended tent-wise by four long lances attached to the four corners held by four barons of the Ports. They were, we are told by Roger de Hoveden, on the occasion of the coronation of Richard I, “followed into Westminster Abbey by a whole crowd of earls, barons, knights and others, cleric and lay.”

As will have been gathered from the Charter to Edward I, the Confederacy is of very ancient origin, and in fact had an existence prior even to the reign of Edward the Confessor. At any rate, it is clear from existing records, traditionary beliefs, and historical data, that William of Normandy was well alive to the usefulness and importance of the Cinque Ports as a means of keeping open the communicating link of Channel seaway with his Duchy; as well as for the general defence of the Kingdom of England, over which he had come to reign, against the periodical incursions of Danish and other pirates. Henry III by an ordinance dated about 1229 stated in clear terms what he required of the Confederacy. It was ordered that the latter should supply—what for those times must be considered the large number of—57 ships; each having for crew 21 men and a boy. And these were to serve the King for not less than 15 days in every year at their own costs and charges, and so long after the said period of fifteen days as contingencies might require. But in the event of an extended term of service payment was to be made. One gathers what is probably not a very inaccurate idea of the relative size and importance of the different towns at that period from the number of ships each supplied. We find Dover sent 21, Winchelsea 10, Hastings 6, and Hythe, Sandwich, Rye, and Romney 5 each.

But to supply ships for the defence of the realm against the King’s enemies was not a burden without compensations. Many special privileges were granted to the towns from time to time, amongst them were those of self-government, the privilege for the freemen to carry the title of “barons,” and the freedom to trade without paying any toll with every corporated town in the kingdom. The inhabitants, too, were exempt from military duties or service. The honour of bearing a canopy over the King and Queen (mentioned by Shakespeare, and re-asserted so recently as at the time of King Edward VII’s coronation) we have already referred to.

Although much of the history of these seven ancient towns, which ultimately formed the Cinque Ports, is unhappily lost to us, the existing records or customals give the student a very good idea of the life of the various periods to which they have reference. One, not the least interesting, was that of giving notice of the need to elect a mayor by a trumpeter at midnight. And woe betide him who refused to take the necessary oath of allegiance to the Ports and the Sovereign. Any who did was promptly ejected from his house, which was forthwith sealed up. At Dover the punishment was even more severe, as the house was generally pulled down.

Another custom, which obtained at both Romney and Hythe, was the presentation by the corporations of those towns of “porpuses” (porpoises) to the lord’s table at Saltwood. We have never, so far as we know, tasted porpoise. It may be good; but, as the American said of another dish, “it sounds strong.”

Amongst the purely medieval institutions in connexion with the Cinque Ports, the Romney Play in those far off times had a great reputation, “drawing crowdes of folk from the other townes, and from afar off in Kent and Sussex,” to witness its representation. There are frequent references to it in the Lydd records; and in the Port papers one finds the accounts and costs relating to these old-time pageants, even the prices paid for “wigges,” false beards, erection of the stage, “floats,” the scenery, costumes, and the labour of the scribe, who appears to have in a measure united the office of author with that of stage manager. The Play was a municipal undertaking, like those of other famous towns. The subjects of the Plays varied somewhat, but the majority appear to have been at least founded upon a religious or sacred basis, or to have been a monkish interpretation of some legend, and were in fact Old Mysteries.

It is difficult to look upon the Romney of to-day and believe that Leland, who visited it in the reign of Henry VIII, was correct in stating that it had been a good haven “yn so much that withyn remembrance of men shyppes have cum hard up to the towne, and cast ancres yn one of the churchyardes.” He goes on to say, too, that at the period of his visit the sea was “two myles from the towne, so sore thereby decayed that wher ther wher 11 great paroches and chirches sumtyme, is now scarece one....”

Most of the Cinque Ports were destined ultimately to decay from the same reason—recession of the sea, caused by what is known as the “Eastward Drift.” And the last great part that they played in the naval history of England was their gallant conduct when the Spanish Armada threatened our shores. Then we find that the ancient spirit, which had animated them in Norman times, flamed up once more—the final flicker of expiring consequence—as of old “to its full height of medieval patriotism”; and, we are told by the same authority, “though their own vessels were poor little craft, the Ports contrived to raise among themselves the sum of £43,000, and to ‘set out’ with that money a handy little squadron of thirteen sail, which did its duty under the orders of Lord Henry Seymour.” Thirteen sail would to some seem ominous; but evidently the Cinque Ports folk were not superstitious. Tradition asserts that these men, who amongst other things, and in addition to sending the thirteen ships to Drake’s Armada Fleet, watched the coast in their poor little craft and “crayers,” also prepared the material for the fire-ships which were destined to bring about, though not actually to accomplish, the final disintegration of the Spanish Fleet. That they contributed their fair share of powder and shot, and energy in manning and manœuvring the ships they had supplied there is ample evidence. They in due course received the special thanks of Queen Elizabeth for their services, and also for the part they played in the lodgement, victualling, and transporting over seas of the troops for her French and Portuguese expeditions, which had so much to do with the final checking of Spain’s power for harm against England.

SOUTH FORELAND

Various legislative measures of modern times have taken away from the Cinque Ports many of their ancient privileges, but they still retain the one of being quite independent of county jurisdiction in many important particulars. The office of Lord Warden is an honorary one and has been at various times held by many of the most distinguished statesmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Amongst those who have held the post may be mentioned William Pitt, Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Wellington, Earl Granville, the Marquis of Salisbury, and Lord Curzon.

On our way to Dover, however, to return to our course, we must pass Sandwich, “the settlement on the sand,” which during the fifteenth century had been gradually declining until towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign it was but a ghost of its former self. Considering Henry’s quarrel with the Holy Father at Rome it was somewhat an irony that the final blow to Sandwich’s prosperity as a port was dealt it by the sinking in the fairway of a large ship owned by the Pope. Over this the sand and mud collected rapidly, practically blocking the channel, and causing the downfall of what was at one time one of the chief ports in the south.

Off Deal one truly sails over the graves of men. Many and many a gallant ship (some of historic note) has brought up in the Downs, and alas! failed to find substantial holding ground when the critical moment arrived. This was the case on November 26, 1703, when the English fleet took shelter there, and during one night of a great gale lasting fourteen days a large number of ships, mostly with all hands, were lost by driving on the Goodwins, including the Stirling Castle, Mary, and Northumberland, each of 70 guns.

Of these fatal and historic sands, nowadays happily well-provided with lights, a poetess has written:

What wealth untold
Far down, shining through their stillness lies!
Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold,
Won from ten thousand royal argosies.

Yet more, the billows and the depths have more!
High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast!
They hear not now the booming waters roar,
The battle thunders will not break their rest.
Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave—
Give back the true and brave.

Deal, indeed, has continued to exist as a place of some importance almost entirely because of its propinquity to the Downs, and the consequent presence of numbers of ships. In the old days, too, the town was the scene of many smuggling exploits and affrays between the pressgang which used to periodically raid the place, and carry off “most of the sturdy seamen manning vessels weather bound in the Downs, much to their own and their captain’s chagrin.” It was, indeed, one of the most profitable of all Kentish towns for such operations.

Walmer with its historic and ivy-clad Castle, the official residence of the Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle, stands above the low-lying shore line, one of the three castles which anciently kept the Downs. Both Deal and Walmer, the former with its long pier, have latterly become holiday resorts of the usual type. A shingly beach in both cases stretches in front of rows of modern lodging and apartment houses which face the sea. It is generally supposed that it was on the beach between Deal and Walmer that in July, 1495, the impostor Perkin Warbeck, with a handful of followers numbering about 600 in all, attempted to land. Nearly a third of the “invaders” were taken prisoners by the trained bands of Sandwich, and were afterwards executed chained together two and two, and their bodies disposed of for hanging in chains all along the coasts of Kent and Sussex. “Where they rotted to the terrifying of all for many yeares.”

It is an incident not entirely without humour that Perkin Warbeck should have chosen to disembark some of his “force” within a mile or two of the spot traditionally identified as the landing place of Cæsar, where also the great Napoleon intended to land.

The coast now increases in height until one reaches charming St Margaret’s Bay, with a few houses almost standing on the beach itself, and others blinking at one from the cliff above. A favourite resort for picnics, but affording unsatisfactory shelter. On the summit of the cliff and a short distance inland stands a fine Norman church worth visiting, if time permits, from Dover. From the top of the cliff there is one of those unrivalled panoramas to which the higher portions of the Kent and Sussex coasts so admirably lend themselves. It extends over the far stretching expanse of Channel, south, east, and west; with the sea traffic of an Empire passing almost at one’s feet.

There is a curious story with an Eugene Aram flavour about it concerning a murder of long ago which was committed by a soldier on the road into Dover from St Margaret’s. He appears to have been of a hardy as well as a murderous nature, for after committing the crime he stuck the walking stick, with which he had killed his comrade, in the earth in a field, boasting that he was sure to escape detection until the stick took root. The latter was of sycamore wood. The soldier went on foreign service, and did not return (so the story goes) for some years. He came along the road which had for him such a tragic memory, and was astounded to find that the stick had grown into a tree. This discovery so horrified and unnerved him that he promptly went back to Dover and gave himself up to the authorities.

The South Foreland is now close on our starboard bow—that magnificent headland which the veteran nautical novelist Mr Clark Russell says is “surely the most incomparable of all vantage grounds for the marine dreamer. It is not only that every fathom of the gleaming water that the eye wanders over is vital with historic tradition, and rich with the most romantic of the hues which give to our own national story the shining complexion it wears; it is still the busiest of old maritime highways; fifty oceanic contrasts fill every hour....” There are, indeed, many types of craft still to be met with and seen in the Downs, from “the dainty clipper model in iron, lifting an almost fairy-like fabric of wire rigging and soaring yards, and swelling snow-white canvas to the skies” to “the huge ocean passenger steamer, noiselessly thrusting her nose through it faster than a gale of wind could have thundered an old line-of-battle ship along.” Then, sometimes, too, there are the white-winged yachts bound for Dover Harbour after a run out into the Channel, or from the Thames estuary bound much farther westward to Cowes, or even Dartmouth or Penzance. Or the Thames barge hugging the coast; a tramp rust-red, and high out of the water in ballast, till she looks like nothing so much as a long, deep cigar box, rounded at both ends, and with a funnel stuck far astern or in the middle, as the builders may have thought best; or sometimes a smart chasse marée, the like of which in the old days did service as privateers out of Calais, or as smugglers out of Boulogne, Dunkirk, or Gravelines.

We are inclined to agree that there is no strip of open water like the Channel off Deal and Dover for interest and variety.

On rounding the towering and magnificent South Foreland one gets one’s first glimpse of Dover when coming from the eastward. It is not very satisfying until one has actually entered the Bay, which is one of the finest artificial havens in the world. It has been the custom in the past of those who simply pass through Dover on their way to or from the Continent to decry it. We could produce more uncomplimentary remarks concerning the “ugliness,” “poverty,” “dullness,” etc., of Dover (perhaps written by those to whom a Channel swell had been less than kind) than of almost any other place of which we have personal knowledge. But to those who approach “the ancient town of Dover with its many memories, its commanding castle, its impressive pharos” leisurely from the sea on a fine day, we can conceive of no feelings being aroused than those of interest and admiration. There is something eternal in the appearance of this sole true survivor of the famous Cinque Ports, which makes it possible for one to realize that much of what one sees, at all events at a first glance, is what has been looked upon by countless generations from the time when Cæsar’s eagle eye rested upon Shakespeare’s Cliff, and travelled up the valley which lies snug in the shelter of and runs inland between the two o’er-topping cliffs. But whilst we may linger amid historic memories Cæsar passed on to an easier landing a little way further up the coast.

When one is snugly inside the breakwater, things begin to assume greater distinctness. There is the Castle and pharos still, but in the serried rows of houses, the Marine Parade along the front, the pier on which are numerous trains made or in the process of making up, and the air of bustle, one begins to realize that Dover’s greatness has not entirely departed, and that one has come to a prosperous and not a decaying port, a lively garrison town, a naval depôt of consequence, a commercial centre for miles round, and a popular holiday resort. And when one contemplates the vast harbour works, which have cost upwards of three and a half million pounds sterling and enclose a water space measuring upwards of 610 acres, one can easily see that Dover’s future may be as useful, as brilliant and as prosperous as has been her past. In this huge haven, which is entirely free from rocks or sandbanks, the largest battleships afloat can anchor in safety under the protection of the countless heavy guns of the forts. Already there is a flotilla of submarines stationed here, and the roadstead is full of life and movement from sunrise to sunset. The harbour has two excellent and adequate approaches, one between the Admiralty Pier and Southern Breakwater, 800 feet in width; the other between the Southern Breakwater and the Eastern Arm 600 feet in width.

Dover is nowadays a capital port for yachtsmen. The town is historic, picturesque, and quaint. It has just the narrow streets on a somewhat larger scale that one meets with in the smaller ports in Cornwall down west. Streets which seem as though squeezed in “where never such were meant to be,” with the two hillsides over-topping them as though thrust aside in high dudgeon. Then inland there is the newer and perhaps smarter town, with villa residences scattered on the sides of the Dour valley, and delightfully situated.

Up above the harbour stands the Castle, a grey, grim survival of an heroic age. It has been fortified from time out of mind. And there are yet existing, notwithstanding all that has been done to add to it and restore it, traces of both Roman and Saxon defences. It was this important fortress, with the not less essential “well of water in it,” that weak Harold undertook to deliver up to William of Normandy as soon as the breath should pass out of Edward the Confessor’s body. But a few days after the Battle of Hastings, which took place on October 14, 1066, and resulted in the defeat of Harold and the slaying of upwards of 30,000 men, William captured the Castle, and appointed as Constable his half-brother, Odo of Bayeux. Most of the walls and towers are of Norman date, and are probably the work of John de Fiennes, the second Constable. The massive and well-preserved keep dates from the reign of Henry II, and other portions of the Castle are of various subsequent periods.

One of the most shameful events in connexion with the story of the Castle is that of King John’s submission there to Pandulph, the Pope’s legate. Three years after this event, in the spring of 1216, Louis VIII of France, who had come over convoyed and supported by a powerful fleet under the command of Eustace the Monk, was before Dover Castle to besiege it after having landed at Stonor and captured Hastings and Rye. He also burnt Sandwich, which refused to yield to him. Some of his force joined with that of the revolting barons, and not only overran Kent, but even penetrated to London, of which they took possession. The garrison of Dover we are told was to the last degree inefficient, feeble, and ill-provisioned. But the commander poor, harried King John had placed in it, with jurisdiction over the Cinque Ports generally, was one of the most able and strongest men of his age, Hubert de Burgh by name. To his courage, resource, and endurance must be placed the credit of the successful defence of the last hope of England against the establishment of a French sovereignty. At length Louis, finding himself unable to reduce the Castle or persuade De Burgh to yield, raised the siege. He had failed; and his father’s remark was justified, “By the arm of St James, my son then has not obtained one foot of land in England.”

Whilst Louis was being driven from his quarry the fleet under Eustace was dispersed and almost destroyed; partly through the gallant efforts of the ships and seamen of the Cinque Ports, and partly by a tempest. Next year, however, Blanche de Castile, Louis’ wife, and a bold and enterprising princess, got together a fleet of “over-powering strength, full of knights and soldiers,” which was as before put under the command of Eustace, the renegade Cinque Port Monk, who had learned what he knew of seamanship and daring from those he was about to attack. But Hubert de Burgh and the men of the Ports in the forty ships lying in Dover Bay were not to be frightened by Eustace, that “pirata nequissimus” (most vile pirate) as the chroniclers of the time not too harshly label him. They decided that it was essential that he should be beaten at sea. If he were to effect a landing the troops he brought might turn the tide of battle and a foreign yoke yet be borne by England.

There are, fortunately, several fairly full and good accounts of this ancient sea battle, in which the courage and seamanship, destined ever to distinguish the men of the Cinque Ports, was splendidly exemplified. The French fleet (we are condensing and modernizing one of the best of the accounts which have come down to us) consisted of upwards of one hundred vessels, and the command of the troops with which they were crowded had been given to one Robert de Courtenay, a distinguished knight, connected (so ’tis said) with the Royal house of France itself.

THE OUTWARD MAIL, DOVER

They trimmed their sails from Calais towards the mouth of the Thames, but the ever-watchful De Burgh and his bold men had descried their coming from the heights above Dover, and at once weighed anchors, and hastened (though the wind was light) to meet them. They did not, however, because of their much inferior size and numbers, deliver a direct attack, but kept their “luff”—a sea term used at that period even as nowadays—till they were nearer France than England. The French commander, unable to comprehend this manœuvre, called out tauntingly that the English thieves were bound for Calais in anticipation of finding it undefended, and in preference to fighting and being defeated. But he was destined soon to discover his error. When well to windward the English ships suddenly put their helms hard up, and bore right down on the French. The latter, quite unprepared for this startling development in the attack, were thrown into confusion. They were apparently too heavily laden to be easily manœuvred; and although, to do him justice, Eustace fought his ships well, they had no chance from the outset of coping successfully with the splendidly handled and lightly burdened English vessels. One can imagine something of the fight from these old chronicles, which say that some of the French vessels were run down (though on more than one instance the English boat suffered severely in “ramming” her opponent) and sunk; others were grappled with and boarded much to the discomfiture of the enemy, as De Burgh’s men had been told to jump aboard and cut the halliards so that the sails fell upon the Frenchmen and incommoded and entangled them. It might be thought that these tactics were good enough to ensure a victory, but the men of the Cinque Ports left nothing to chance, and in addition to the usual methods of offence had laid in a stock of quicklime, which as they sheered alongside (of course to windward) was thrown with blinding effect in the faces of the Frenchmen, who lined the sides of their vessels to repel the boarders.

The combined result of these ingenious methods of attack supported by courage and address was a complete victory. It is said that only fifteen ships escaped—probably the leading vessels with which the English did not come up. The general was taken a prisoner; and, unfortunately for him, Eustace himself was found hidden on the ship of Robert de Courtenay, and was dragged from his place of concealment in the hold by a bastard son of King John. In those days justice did not tarry long on the way. There was a sharp sword ready. And there on the deck the renegade was summarily beheaded, “and ys blood ran yn ye scuppers, and thence ynto ye sea.”

Many gallant French knights, we learn, sooner than suffer capture, which was otherwise inevitable, leaped into the sea in their armour and speedily sank.

It is satisfactory to know that the spoil taken and the ransoms obtained for the French nobles who were captured were such as to “greatly enrich the seamen, so that for the rest of their days they could dwell in comfort.”

A picturesque and impressive touch was lent to the homecoming of the victors, who were met by a great procession of bishops and clergy, who had anxiously watched the issue of the fight from the summit of Dover cliffs. Seldom we may readily believe was a victory more welcome, for with this crushing naval defeat and the destruction of his force for invasion Louis was compelled to relinquish all hope of ascending the throne of England. And to ensure his escape to France he made a treaty which finally disposed of any claim he thought he possessed.

The Cinque Ports folk of that age learned in a rough school, and it is perhaps little to be wondered at that occasionally, when truces of a temporary character had been entered into between this country and France or Spain, they failed to observe them with any degree of promptness or completeness, but went on “plundering and harrying their natural enemies the French,” until the King had on several occasions to interfere, and call them to book.

It is, doubtless, to these acts, and others brought about by general orders issued by different Sovereigns in succeeding reigns, that the charges of piracy which have been levelled in the past and by some present-day writers against the men of the Cinque Ports are traceable. Matthew Paris, amongst other historians, charges them distinctly not only with piracy on the French, but with robbing and murdering their own fellow countrymen. A careful examination of the circumstances and facts leading up to this charge leads one to think that they were possibly guilty. But it must be remembered in extenuation that the age in which Paris lived was a lawless and disturbed one. The orders received by the men of the Cinque Ports were frequently of a general character to carry fire and sword along the enemy’s coasts, and it is little to be wondered at if the hardy seamen who frequently fought at long odds were not the most scrupulous of victors, and sometimes failed to discriminate to a nicety between legal and illegal predatory warfare. The very freedom of the privileges they enjoyed as citizens of the Ports made them less accountable than they doubtless otherwise would have been to the King’s properly constituted authority. Certain it is that on several occasions in the Middle Ages the men of the Ports were not backward in entering into a little war of their own, to their immediate and great advantage. They were pirates in just the same way as were the men and adventurers of the Devon and Cornish ports, and the French hailing from Morlaix, St Malo, and other Norman and Breton ports in those times.

It is, however, impossible to inquire further into this fascinating period of our naval history. In the records of the Cinque Ports which still exist there is enough material for a score of romances. Suffice it to say that the same adventurous spirit which made these seamen in medieval times such stout and successful defenders of the narrow seas caused them in a later age to rank amongst the most daring and resourceful as well as the most successful of smugglers.

But to return to Dover Castle, in whose history, indeed, is enshrined that of the town itself. At the outbreak of the Civil War between Charles and his Parliament it was garrisoned by Royalists. The story of its capture reads more like a piece of pure romance than actual fact. But here is the tale. It occurred to an enterprising handful of Roundheads, led by a citizen of Dover named Dawkes or Drake, to attempt the taking of the fortress. Their plan, simple in the extreme, was to climb up the steep cliff on the sea side, which it was not thought necessary to guard, and thus surprise the garrison. Accompanied by a score or so of fellow Roundheads, Dawkes succeeded in scaling the cliff face and surprising the Royalists, who hastened to surrender under the impression that the attack was supported by a strong force. Never, perhaps, fell so strong a place so easily, save when treachery had something to do with the matter, and in this case it was lack of courage and information, not the work of traitors, which led to the garrison’s undoing. Thus fell Dover Castle to a handful of enterprising Puritans; and although the King made repeated attempts to recover possession of so commanding a fortress, he did not succeed, “the strongest Royalist force being easily repulsed by those that were within.”

At the Restoration, however, Charles II found Dover citizens among the most loyal and enthusiastic to bid him welcome back to his own again. It was the effusiveness of the greeting given him which caused the King to remark to one of his courtiers, “Oddsfish, man, these good folk appear so happy to see us that surely it was our own fault we did not come before.”

Pepys tells us that the Mayor solemnly presented the King with a handsomely bound copy of the Bible! A present regarding the appropriateness of which many members of the Court must have had grave doubts. One can imagine with what inward amusement the pleasure-loving, gallant Charles declared to the cheering, banner-waving throng surrounding him that the Bible was “the thing of all others he loved most in the world.”

Just forty-eight years later Dover cliffs were thronged to see a fleet pass on its way, whither the people who strained their eyes to catch a glimpse of it did not then know. It was that of William of Orange come to free them from the weak tyranny of James II, and as it passed in line with the Castle the nearest ships saluted the English flag which floated in the breeze on the Keep, and far away across the grey waters of the Channel could be seen the smoke of the Calais guns returning the salute of the French flag by the Dutch ships on that side. Thus sailed over practically the same water the argosies of peace just as had sailed a century before those of Spain and of war. The eyes which gazed out at them were not those of aforetime; but the same spirit of anxiety doubtless animated most of the watchers on the headland.

A century later, when Napoleon was gathering his legions and his transports at Boulogne for the invasion of England, Dover was still a busy place. “There was a constant stir in the town,” we are told, “made chiefly by the coming and going of couriers between it and the metropolis, and the activity of those engaged upon the works of defence, and the presence in our midst of many thousands of volunteers.” Not that all was business, for with the military and the additional civilian element came the ladies, all, however, prepared to take instant flight on the rumoured, let alone actual, approach of that great bugabo, Napoleon, and where they came there was sure to be junketing and gaiety, even in the midst of the stern preparations for la guerre à l’outrance. Post shays, mail coaches and private carriages, as well as transport wagons and carriers’ carts, made the road from Dover to London busy night and day; and along the sea-front, as well as in the narrow streets of the town itself, were to be seen fashionable ladies and their beaux “gossiping, and often shivering in simulated horror at the mention of the terrible name which just then filled all minds,” so that Dover was almost at times like Hyde Park.

It is unnecessary to add that the fortifications of the Castle underwent a thorough overhauling, thereby being immensely strengthened, and ever since that time, almost from year to year, additions and modern improvements have been made until it is not too much to say that they are now amongst the most efficient and powerful in the world.

And up above one, as one lies at anchor, amongst the most modern and destructive of weapons, with its muzzle directed seaward, stands that beautiful piece of ordnance known as Queen Elizabeth’s Pocket Pistol. It is no less than twenty-four feet in length and was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and presented by the Dutch to the Queen. The inscription which it bears in Low Dutch finds a popular but inaccurate translation in the well-known couplet:

Load me well and keep me clean,
I’ll carry my ball to Calais Green

A rough literal translation, however, reads somewhat as follows:

Men call me breaker of rampart and wall;
’Tis true over hill and dale I can hurl my big ball.

In the Castle and town of Dover there are several interesting old buildings and churches. The Castle Church of St Mary is of the greatest interest, more especially to architects and antiquarians, as it is undoubtedly one of the oldest ecclesiastical buildings in the country. It is thought to stand on the site of the Roman Prætorium, and by some authorities is stated to incorporate within its walls some portions of that ancient structure, which was converted to the uses of a Christian church in the third century. Previous to its restoration (one might also add rescue) in 1860 by Sir Gilbert Scott it was used as a coal cellar! The ancient Roman pharos (which had its fellow on the western heights and served to guide the Roman galleys to port from Gaul across the Channel) stands close to the church. Nowadays it is roofless and ivy-clad, and much of the ancient work is obscured by later masonry, but it forms an interesting and romantic object for all seafarers. It was for a considerable period used as a belfry, but its bells were (so the story goes) filched by Sir George Rooke, the capturer of Gibraltar, who carried them off to Portsmouth and had them melted down!

In the town itself both St Mary’s and St James’s Churches are worth attention, the latter more particularly as it was anciently the place at which the old Cinque Ports Court of Admiralty used to meet. The Maison Dieu in the same street, now forming a portion of the municipal buildings, was founded by the famous and gallant Constable of Dover, Hubert de Burgh, in the reign of King John, for the use and entertainment of pilgrims, soldiers, and seamen returning from abroad or foreign service. The foundation had a resident master and several brethren and sisters attached to it, and was in the Middle Ages extremely wealthy. After its suppression by Henry VIII the hall, the only remaining portion of the ancient buildings, was set apart for use as a brew house, and at a later period was used as a naval victualling store. It was acquired in 1834 by the Corporation, and restored in 1860. The stained glass windows and portraits of the kings of England, Lord Wardens, and others in the building are worth examination.

Of modern Dover not much need be said. It differs in its main characteristics little from the usual garrison town, and possesses most, if not all, of the advantages and disadvantages of such places. If the harbour were not so fine, and the historic interest so enduring, we fancy few pleasure seekers on blue water would make it a port of call.

From Dover to Rye (passing Folkestone, Hythe, and New Romney) is a matter of twenty-seven miles. Once outside the harbour a straight course can be laid for Dungeness, eighteen miles distant. Folkestone Harbour is a pleasant one, and the town is lively and bustling. The proximity of Shorncliffe Camp (used by Sir John Moore of Corunna fame) adds materially to the life of the place. The approach from the sea, after passing along miles of shore, gradually decreasing in height and mostly pebbly, is pleasant and picturesque. And in the famous Leas, which may be said to be “the Hoe” of Folkestone, the town possesses one of the most pleasant and healthful promenades on the south coast.

Although Folkestone is mentioned in the Domesday Book as a fishing port called Folchestan, it has even more ancient history attaching to it. Nowadays its harbour is a busy one, for it is one of the cross Channel traffic ports, and although many who merely pass through may remember the town chiefly for its passenger traffic it has a great goods traffic also. In the warehouses along the quay, where the cargoes which have been unloaded are examined and the duties levied by the Custom House officials, we have seen merchandise from almost every quarter of the globe, both manufactured and raw material. Silks and velvets from Lyons; gloves, boots, hats from Parisian houses, artificial flowers and feathers from the same; ostrich feathers from South Africa in their queer-looking cardboard tubes; bales of woollen and cotton goods; watches from Switzerland; pottery and metal work from Austria; wines from France and Italy; and perfumes from Paris, from Italy, and from the famous manufactories at Grasse in the south of France—in a word, everything which goes to meet the demands of modern life and modern luxury. Then there is the daily trade of the Continent—the flowers, fruit, eggs, and vegetables which arrive nightly in huge consignments and make the quays such scenes of life and bustle. Yes, Folkestone is a busy and interesting seaport as well as a pleasant harbour and holiday place.

But everything is not quite modern in Folkestone. There lies to the north of the Outer Harbour an old town, of whose existence comparatively few of the thousands of visitors who come to it or pass through it annually know anything. Those who love the old rather than the new; narrow alleys and quaint architecture, rather than wide streets, broad promenades, up-to-date shops and prim villas, will find here a mine of interest, like the famous author of The Ingoldsby Legends, who writes: “Its streets, lanes and alleys—fanciful distinctions without much real difference—are agreeable enough to persons who don’t mind running up and down stairs; and the only inconvenience at all felt by such of its inhabitants as are not asthmatic is when some heedless urchin tumbles down a chimney, or an impertinent pedestrian peeps in at a garret window.”

Folkestone is still a fishing port, though the industry is not what it used to be. In recent years there has been a revival of those ancient medieval ceremonies of blessing the sea and thanksgiving for the harvest of the sea which were anciently so common.

In the latter years of the eighteenth and the first four decades of the nineteenth centuries, however, smuggling was with many of the fisherfolk a much more popular means of obtaining a livelihood than fishing. The whole of the outer portion of the town was honeycombed with cellars, secret passages, and “tub holes,” in which the contraband goods were stored until they could be finally and profitably disposed of. The nearness of Folkestone to the French coast made frequent trips across possible, and the smugglers were doubtless favoured by the laxity which was said to prevail amongst the coastguards on the Kentish and Sussex coast at the period when smuggling was at its height. For some years previous to 1831 a blockade of the coast had been instituted, and for a time smuggling was “under a cloud”; but on the removal of the blockade in 1830 there was a great revival, in the Deal, Walmer, and Folkestone districts especially. Many flagrant cases of connivance occurred in the two years immediately following the removal of the blockade, and numbers of men were dismissed from the preventive service. That the bribes given by the smugglers and their agents were substantial was, of course, natural, seeing that the rewards for seizures were so high. We are told in several records[A] that as much as a thousand pounds was not infrequently shared amongst the officers and men of a coastguard station after the capture of a big cargo, the lowest share, that of the boatmen, being some £85 to £90. Little wonder need be experienced then when it is stated that “many a sentry on night duty could reckon on seeing £40 by keeping his eyes shut.” A way of expressing the case of a truly Hibernian character. Women confederates of the smugglers were frequently employed to corrupt the men of the preventive service, and so common a practice had this become that a special order was issued along the Sussex and Kent coasts which is substantially as follows: “Having reason to believe and fear that an attempt will be made to corrupt our men through the medium of females, it is ordered that patrols hold no communication when on duty with any person, either male or female.”

[A] Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways, by the Hon. H. N. Shore, R.N.

But the Kentish and Sussex smugglers did not stop at bribery or corruption. If it was felt that either an informer had been at work, or that the coast was too well guarded to make a successful run possible, it was the practice of the smugglers to make their arrangements to assemble in force sufficiently strong to overpower the patrol and then the cargo was run under the “preventives’” very noses. As a rule, the “runs” made upon the Kentish and Sussex coasts were what was known as “direct.” That is to say, the boats which brought over the goods were sufficiently small or of sufficiently light draught to permit of their being beached or brought close inshore without the necessity (as was the case further west) of transhipment of the bales and tubs into smaller boats to be rowed ashore. The type of craft most in favour in the Deal and Folkestone districts were galleys, rowing ten or twelve oars and very fast, which could easily make the cross Channel passage in three or four hours in favourable weather. Or what were known as “tub-boats,” mere shells, which would not ride out a gale, knocked together out of the flimsiest and cheapest materials, and consequently of so little value (compared with the cargoes they conveyed) that they were frequently abandoned after the run, and were never troubled about in the case of a surprise, but left to their fate and to capture with little distress on the part of their owners. As a rule, these “tub-boats” were towed across Channel by French luggers, which left them when they had been brought within a mile or two of the coast, when sweeps were got out and the flimsy but heavily laden craft were brought inshore or beached.

Amongst the most famous of the larger smuggling craft of the district may be mentioned the Black Rover, of Sandwich, which had a most ingenious method of concealing goods in tin cases; the Isis, of Rye, which was fitted with a false bow; and the Mary Ann, of the same place, fitted with a false keel. A Folkestone boat taken in 1828 was found to have a most ingenious concealment “running from the stern to the transom, and from keel up to the underpart of the thwarts.”

How profitable smuggling was few people nowadays, we fancy, realize. There is, of course, the vague knowledge surviving that great fortunes were made by the most successful smugglers, but the amount of profit upon a single successful run is not generally known.

A very common practice was for a number of people to “club” together to provide the funds for a “run,” which generally ruled at £1 per “tub.” Some would, say, take fifty shares (i.e., “tubs”); others more or less as the case might be. The captain of a likely vessel was engaged to make the trip for a lump sum varying in amount according to the size of the cargo, seldom, however, falling much below £100. Then the men of the crew would have to be paid from £25 down to £10 a piece, according to the amount involved and the demand for men at the time. In France the “tubs” would cost from 17s. to 18s., and each English sovereign was worth in purchasing value about twenty-one shillings; but, taking it all round, to the persons engaged in financing the run the cost would amount to £1 per “tub,” the difference being taken by the captain for incidental expenses, such as sinkers, rope, food for crew on trip, etc. Then there would be an additional £1 to pay for each “tub” successfully “run” and delivered to the adventurers. The total cost was thus about £2 per tub; the value of each on this side of the Channel had the duty been paid £6 to £6 5s. Then it should not be forgotten that the spirit was so greatly above proof (generally 70%, and sometimes as high as 180%) that it could be diluted to twice, three, or even four times its bulk, so that each “tub” would ultimately produce from £12 to £20. Or in profit—less, of course, the amount paid to the captain and men of the boat—£10 to £18 per tub according to the amount of dilution which the strength of the original spirit allowed. On a cargo of 200 “tubs” or more it will be easily seen that the profit to be divided was enormous, and if the venture was that of a single individual half-a-dozen successful runs would almost make his fortune.

In the event of a cargo being seized the loss was in a very much less proportion. It consisted merely of the £100 paid the captain, the amount paid the men in the boat, and £1 per tub. It is little wonder then that, in the days to which we refer, smuggling was rife all along the coast from the North Foreland to Penzance.

How prosperous the smuggling trade of Folkestone was in the early years of the last century may be gathered from the following statement made by an old smuggler of Lydd. This old man used frequently to run across Channel in one of the smuggling galleys, taking with him a quantity of English guineas (which could easily be disposed of at Gravelines, Calais, or Boulogne for twenty-five to thirty shillings apiece), the proceeds of which he would invest in a cargo of tobacco, silk, lace, and spirits. In this way he made, if the “run” were successful, a double profit. On occasion, too, he would obtain valuable information regarding the movements of the French fleet, and then on his way back across the Channel he would run alongside any English man-o’-war he came across, and let them know all he had been able to learn. This same smuggler used to say that in those times guineas were so common amongst the smuggling fraternity that they used to play pitch and toss with them.

A not uninteresting light upon the way in which Napoleon financed his wars is to be gathered from the following statement, which is taken from O’Meara’s Napoleon at St Helena: “I got bills on Vera Cruz, which certain agents sent by circuitous routes ... to London, as I had no direct communication. The bills were discounted by merchants in London, to whom ten per cent, and sometimes a premium, was paid as their reward.... Even for the equipping of my last expedition after my return from Elba a great part of the money was raised in London.” Napoleon also added that the gold was brought over to France by the smugglers.

There also would appear but little doubt that the smugglers were few of them above selling information to the French of the movements of the English fleet, the mobilization of troops, and the progress of works for the defence of the country from invasion. At all events, Napoleon abundantly testified that he was kept informed by them of “every important occurrence and movement of the enemy (English) by these men.”

Their treachery was suspected by the authorities, but we believe comparatively seldom discovered and brought home to the traitors.

No wonder then that Folkestone old town is, or certainly was but a few years ago, a nest of ingenious hiding-places, relics of the smuggling days, which were often so cleverly constructed that their discovery was only made when a beam had been removed, or alterations had to be made, and sometimes not until the house in which they were was entirely pulled down.

There are, of course, many smuggling stories connected with Folkestone houses. One of the best is as follows: On a certain night in November in the year 1826 a cargo had been successfully run between Hythe and Folkestone by a noted smuggler, and a portion of it had been brought into the latter town and safely secreted. However, one of the Folkestone coastguards got wind of the fact, and in the very early morning appeared with a strong band of “preventives” in the street in which the smuggler’s house stood. Their summons did not at once meet with an answer, but at length, after repeated hammerings on the door and shutters of the windows of the ground floor, which noise aroused the whole street, Nancy Morris, the daughter of the smuggler, thrust her head from the upper window and, rubbing her eyes as though aroused out of sleep, inquired what was wanted.

“Open in the King’s name!” exclaimed the officer in command. “And look sharp about it, my lass, or ’twill be the worse for you, and your old fox of a father.”

Nancy did not hurry downstairs, but after a few moments the door was opened, the “preventives” streamed into the kitchen, and then, seeing no one save the girl and a child, a boy of about twelve asleep in a nook by the fire, several of the men went upstairs. No one was to be discovered, however. But the officer was not satisfied. He decided to remain on guard himself, and, after whispering to two or three of his men (for smugglers were at times rough customers to manage single-handed) to be handy if required, he sat down to pass the time as best he might. Nancy was pretty; the coastguard lieutenant was a sailor man. Nancy was also resourceful, and a gentle flatterer to boot. And so it is little wonder that the lieutenant succumbed to her charms, drank her health, fell incontinently into a doze, which, by reason of Miss Nancy’s having drugged the cognac, became a deep sleep. And then down the chimney, at a signal from his clever daughter, crept sturdy William Morris, choking a bit with the smoke, but otherwise no worse. A few moments later a trap was lifted in the floor of the back-kitchen and the smuggler disappeared. Nancy let down the flap, re-sanded the floor carefully, and returned to attempt to arouse the unwelcome guest.

By the time he was brought to himself and to a knowledge that he had most probably been tricked, William Morris was sitting comfortably in the parlour of a house several hundred yards away, having reached that haven of refuge at first by an underground passage leading to a near-by house, and afterward by a back alley.

The lieutenant had nothing to boast of, and as there was not much to his credit at all in the adventure he kept his own counsel. Nancy was profuse in her expressions of delight at his “nice rest.”

“Sir,” said she, “you must indeed have needed it sadly.”

And we can well imagine her laughter when the house door closed after her crestfallen guest.

It was not till comparatively recent years that this old house was pulled down, and the connecting passage, “tub hole,” under the back kitchen floor, and the hiding-place in the chimney stack, about 7 ft. by 2 ft. by 3ft., were disclosed.

Many more like yarns were current years ago, but we must up anchor and set our faces once more westward.

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.

The chief glory of the church, however, lies in the marvellously carved canopied tombs of those merchant princes and admirals of the Cinque Ports of long ago, Gervaise and Stephen Alard, grandfather and grandson. There are few, if any, finer in Sussex.

The old Grey Friars Priory, or what was left of it, was the habitation in Georgian times of two brothers, George and Joseph Weston by name, who, whilst apparently pursuing the peaceful and respectable avocations of country gentlemen, were actually highwaymen, the terror of the Kentish and Sussex high roads and those of counties further afield, and, withal, were daring and successful robbers of coaches. They were eventually “taken” and ultimately hanged, amid much excited interest, at Tyburn. It is they and their adventures which form the basis of Thackeray’s unfinished romance, Denis Duval, which he wrote on the spot in a house standing near the churchyard.

Thackeray, in a letter to the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, in which he gives a good many interesting details of the incidents upon which his story is founded, whilst referring to other Winchelsea and Rye characters, says of the Westons: “They were rascals, too. They were tried for robbing the Bristol mail in 1780, and, being acquitted for want of evidence, were tried immediately afterward on another indictment for forgery; Joseph was acquitted, but George was capitally convicted.” Joseph was not destined to escape, however, for, as the novelist goes on to say, “Before their trials they and some others broke out of Newgate, and Joseph fired at and wounded a porter who tried to stop him on Snow Hill. For this he was tried and found guilty on the Black Act, and hung along with his brother.”

It was in the churchyard of Winchelsea that John Wesley, who was almost always travelling about the country, preached his last open-air sermon, in 1790, under the shelter of the great tree on the western side, “to many folk,” we are told, “some few of which were converted so that tears ran a-down their cheeks.”

And thus the greatness of Winchelsea, stranded as it is from the lapping of the channel surges, though the boom of them when angry can be heard, is of the past.

Chapter II
Newhaven—Shoreham—Littlehampton

The coast to Newhaven from Rye, if not exactly pretty, becomes once more attractive, and after Fairlight Point the Downs come seaward again, and the coast-line for a considerable distance is once more formed by bold chalk cliffs.

Though Hastings has no longer a harbour and is not, as formerly in the long ago, a port, one must devote to this historic town and ancient Cinque Port at least a passing notice.

Of all the chief towns of the Cinque Ports there are fewer records relating to Hastings than of any other, and this is, perhaps, not to be greatly wondered at when one remembers that at the commencement of the nineteenth century it had sunk from its old-time greatness to the position of a small fishing village. The town will, however, whatever the variation of its fortunes, always remain a “great name in history” because of its association with one of the crises of the world’s evolutionary progress, the Battle of Hastings. Even in early British times there seems no reason for doubt that Hastings was a strongly fortified place, the “forts” being placed on the East Hill as well as on the Castle Hill. The castle was either Roman in its origin or was erected on foundations already existing and belonging to a much earlier period.

Hastings has also historic interest from figuring in the famous Bayeux tapestry under the name of Hastingaceastra. If further evidence were required of the very ancient existence of the place it is afforded by the very considerable discoveries of Roman pottery, coins, and other relics which have from time to time been made. The original name of the district was Rameslie, and at one time it evidently formed part of the property attached to the Abbey of Fécamp. At the time of the great Survey, the results of which are recorded in the Domesday Book, the place possessed no less than five churches and five score of salt pits or salterns. Under Saxon rule it undoubtedly rose to a position of great importance, and this notwithstanding the fact that it was repeatedly attacked and ravaged by hordes of Danish and other pirates, who did not, however, succeed in gaining any permanent footing. In the time of Athelstan it was of sufficient note to share with Gloucester and Lewes the distinction of being a “mint” town. The more modern name of Hastings is reputed to have been derived from the famous Danish pirate Haestinga, who for a time established a fort or stronghold near the spot.

But as one writes of Hastings, the scene which the white cliffs witnessed on that October morning, 1066, comes insensibly before one’s eyes, when from across the Channel came a fleet of low, long galleys, some under sail and with curious high stems and sterns, most of them with two or three short straight masts like those of luggers, whilst others had strange devices upon their prows, or shields ornamented with crests and coats of arms hung out along their bulwarks.

Fortunately for the voyaging host the sea was calm and the wind blew from a favourable quarter, for the transports of those times were not easy to manage in a gale or contrary wind. At length they drew in close with the land, the prows of the smaller vessels grated upon the sand and shingle of the beach, and then the busy scene of landing both men and horses ensued. William the Norman had come to claim the throne of England, and, with Harold and the English fleet away in the north, had landed without opposition.

He pitched his tents, built himself a wooden castle, and then set about the ravaging of the country round about, till Harold should appear with the English to give him battle.

In hot haste, Harold, Godwin’s son, marched back to London, calling upon his nobles and relatives, Edwin and Morcar amongst the number, to join him; but the two latter held back. Then Harold, having gathered the men of London and Kent and many of the country folk to his standard, marched to meet William, and, reaching Senlac, “lay there on the hillside by a hoar-apple tree.” Gurt, his brother, prayed him to retire again on London, after wasting the country between William and that place, so that the latter could get neither fodder for his horses nor food for his men. Good advice, doubtless, as Harold himself admitted, adding, however, “I was made King to cherish this folk. How shall I lay waste this land of theirs? Nor does it befit an English King to turn from his foes.”

Every one knows the story of the “feasting” English and the “praying” Normans, though whether it be true or not, who shall say? Just as every one knows how went the day on the “bloody heights of Senlac, where, after the attack had been made by a Norman minstrel, who rode up against the English singing a war song of Charlemagne, the last Saxon King, his two brothers, the flower of English fighting men and nobles to a great multitude fell.”

William refused the body of slain Harold to his mother, who pleaded for it, even if she paid its weight in gold; but when Edith Swan’s-neck, whom Harold had loved, found it beneath a heap of slain, the Norman conqueror, his chivalry and perhaps even his sentiment touched, gave it to her, telling them to bury it on the face of the cliff with the words, “He kept the shore well while he lived, let him keep it now he is dead.”

Though this is the supreme historical event connected with Hastings, many times during the reigns of our Norman Kings was the place to witness the assemblage of huge bodies of fighting men. Here in 1094 were gathered at the command of William Rufus no less than 20,000 men for the avowed purpose of transhipment to Normandy. They were, however, disbanded, and the men were deprived by agents of the King of the pay of ten shillings given them, “which great sum in all was duly forwarded to the King, at whose behest it had been filched!” A truly Royal piece of chicanery.

In the fourteenth century the town, which had sprung up to some considerable importance, was raided by the French, sacked, and burned. But by the fifteenth it had grown up again to be a large place with a considerable military force attached to it. By the sixteenth it had received a charter and had a mayor and twelve jurats, a harbour of some size, and a considerable trade in shipbuilding. No traces of the inlet once existing now break the coast-line, and the closest search meets with no reward in discoveries of antiquity. The first Hastings lies fathoms deep under the sea, the second has passed away, and in the third one has the modern town with its long lines of boarding-houses and hotels lining the sea-front. Not very picturesque save when seen at night brilliantly lit, with the numberless fishing boats carrying riding or other lights twinkling like huge glow worms in the foreground.

Hastings during the latter part of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries was one of the most notorious places along the whole Sussex coast for smuggling, on account of its convenient landing-places. The lawless Hawkhurst gang, to which reference will later be made, had several of its members hailing from the town, and the bands of smugglers in the immediate district were bold to a degree, often (as we are told) daring to land their cargoes of contraband under the very noses of the preventive men whose duty it was to frustrate such attempts. Wrecking, too, was an occasional variation of occupation for the smugglers, and several vessels are known in the first decade of the last century to have been lured to destruction by false lights shown on the cliffs.

The smugglers extended their operations far inland, daring to take their cargoes as far as Brede and other places for storage. Brede Place, which was one of their resorts, once the home of the Attefords, but afterwards that of the Oxenbridges, has several weird legends connected with it. Not the least uncanny is the story of one Sir Goddard Oxenbridge, who died in 1557, we should imagine little lamented by his neighbours. This owner of the manor, besides being a reputed dealer in the “black arts,” had so strong a liking for human flesh that children of the neighbourhood were constantly disappearing, to the grief of their parents and the “engorgement of this terrible ogre-like being.” For babies this Sir Goddard, who, we are informed, was of great stature and “flourished amazingly on his diet of human flesh,” had an especial partiality. Further, “neither bow, nor arrow, nor axe, nor sword, nor spear could slay this redoubtable giant, but some of the country people about here succeeded at length in making him drunk and in sawing him in half with a wooden saw!” A truly marvellous performance in good keeping with the rest of the tale!

But whether the legend of Sir Goddard Oxenbridge has any real foundation on fact or not, there is little doubt that soon after his death the place acquired so evil a reputation (owing to the appearance of his ghost, “with dripping jaws” and “an uncanny light from his eyes”) that people of a nervous and even those usually of a bold disposition avoided it. The ingenious smugglers of Hastings and the neighbourhood in the eighteenth century were not slow to appreciate the advantages afforded by this gloomy and ruinous old manor house, and they not only sedulously cultivated the idea that Brede was haunted but “put up some other very pretty tales amongst the country folk to dissuade them from approaching the house,” and in addition showed ghostly and mysterious lights. These tactics were so eminently successful that for some years the smugglers retained undisturbed possession of the place, using it as a storehouse for their goods.

There is reputed to be an underground passage leading from the house to the church—a distance of about a mile—but this has not of recent years, nor for all we know ever, been entered nor the existence of it proved. The disappearance of two revenue men was attributed to the Brede Place gang, and in the eighties of the eighteenth century the house was attacked and raided in the smugglers’ absence by the “preventives” in search of their missing comrades. Nothing, not even a tub or bale, was, however, then discovered, only an old man, who was as deaf as the proverbial adder and, it is very likely, as wise as the serpent.

Close to the house is a bridge which bears the name of “Groaning Bridge.” Tradition asserts that it was near here that Sir Goddard was sawn in half, and that the noises which are sometimes heard after dusk are his lamentable cries. Another tale is that it was in the hollow beneath the bridge that some of the smugglers used to hide at nights, and by making “most horrible and terrifying noises and groans so successfully prevented the further advance of any intending intruder towards the house.”

Onward from Hastings to our next port, Newhaven, one passes several of the ancient “limbs” of the Cinque Ports, Pevensey, one of the eight corporate members, the most important. No longer a port, the little town lies nearly a mile inland from the sea, which once almost washed the walls of its fine and impressive castle, set on a mound and surrounded by a rush-grown moat, and visible from afar.

Pevensey is nowadays, too, divided by stretches of flat marshy fields from the Channel, and has little of interest remaining save the traditions of its historic past as a Cinque Port “limb,” the jokes which are recorded against its municipal rulers, and the fact that it undoubtedly occupies the site of Anderida of the Romans. The remains of the Roman walls, which surround the Norman castle of Robert de Moreton, half-brother of the Conqueror, give to the place an interest not exceeded even by that of Lewes or Richborough. Here was once a city or at least a great settlement bordering upon that great, widely extending forest of Anderida, once covering the Weald of Sussex, which was probably as large, though perhaps not so famous, as the New Forest of Hampshire. The departure of the Roman legions was the signal for piratical descents upon our coasts, and the Saxons under Ella landed on the shore near Pevensey, and slew every Briton they came across.

Pevensey Castle has had a stirring and chequered history. Its stalwart walls, now ivy-clad and crumbling, have survived many an attack in those ages when the strongholds of nobles were called upon to resist not alone the assaults of foreign invaders, but also those of English nobles making private war; and within its walls have languished many whose names are written on the page of history for better or for worse. Brave Queen Maude held the place against the forces of Stephen, and only yielded when brought face to face with famine; and it has had yet another brave woman defender (ranking with Lady Bankes, of Corfe, in Dorsetshire) for the Lancastrians in the last year of the fourteenth century, Lady Joan Pelham.

As one writer has put it, “she wielded her pen not less readily than she commanded and directed the sword.” In a letter to her husband—a model of tenderness and felicitous expression—she says, “My dear Lord,—I recommend me to your high Lordship, with heart and body and all my poor might, and with all this I think (of) you, as my dear Lord, dearest and best beloved of all earthly Lords.... I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the malice of your enemies. And, dear Lord, if it like you to your high Lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your gracious speed, which God Almighty continue and increase. And my dear Lord, if it like you to know my fare, I am here laid by in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may not go out nor no victuals get me, but with much hard.” Then, in the concluding paragraph, we get a sight of the tender heart of a devoted and loving woman, the same in all time and stress, and not variable at all. “Farewell, my dear Lord,” writes the beleaguered Joan Pelham, “the Holy Trinity keep you from your enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you.... By your own poor J. Pelham.” And then the superscription, “To my true Lord.” July 25, 1399.[B]

[B] Rendered into modern English from Brydge’s Peerage, vol. v, C.H.

A few years later and Edmund, Duke of York, was imprisoned here; and Queen Joan of Navarre, widow of the Duke of Bretagne, and second wife of Henry IV, was also confined here for a period of more than eight long years. The former appears to have been “an uncommon grateful prisoner,” for he is said to have left his gaoler a legacy of £20!

In Pevensey town in the sixteenth century lived a jester (professional or otherwise we have not succeeded in discovering), Andrew Borde, a monk, said to be the original “Merry Andrew,” and the author of two ancient works, still known to the few, called the Boke of Knowledge and The Wise Men of Gotham. His witticisms were apparently not seldom directed against the municipal authorities of Pevensey. On one occasion he makes the Mayor assert, with much access of dignity, “Though Mayor of Pevensey I am yet but a man,” and accuses a Pevensey jury of having brought in a verdict of manslaughter against a yeoman charged with stealing a pair of leather breeches!

Another detailed account of this latter event says that when the man had been brought in guilty of stealing the breeches by the jury, and they were informed that the theft was a capital offence, they were astounded and unwilling to hang the man and so adjourned the Court, dispatching a messenger hot haste to Thomas Willard, Esq., of Eastbourne, the town clerk, to beg his opinion whether it would be possible to reverse the present verdict and bring in a fresh one. It happened that Lord Wilmington, with the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was at dinner with Mr Willard when the messenger arrived, and upon Mr Willard telling these two gentlemen the nature of the message he had received, the Chief Baron (as a joke, one must suppose) said, “Instruct them to reverse the present verdict and bring in another of manslaughter.” To this advice Lord Wilmington also assented, and Mr Willard advised accordingly, with the humorous result we have already mentioned.

Whilst yet another Mayor, who received an important letter by special messenger whilst engaged in the occupation of mending the thatch on his pig’s stye, on attempting to read the communication upside down, “was so long a-doing it” that the messenger at last ventured to hint respectfully that if he would attempt to read his letter as did ordinary folk he would make speedier progress towards mastering the contents. The reply must have been crushing, “Hold your tongue, sir!” exclaimed his worship with asperity, “understand that while I’m Mayor of Pevensey I hold a letter which end up I choose.”

Andrew Borde’s fame as a mirth provoker was so widespread that we find King Edward VI himself came to visit him. The room which by tradition is pointed out as that in which the youthful Sovereign had the interview with his father’s old physician is nowadays somewhat of a show place, and the house itself is a quaint one.

It is but five miles from Pevensey to Eastbourne, clean and smart-looking even from a distance at sea, and made yet more attractive to the vision by the charming wooded slopes of Paradise which form its setting or background; but there is no harbour or haven, and, in addition, Eastbourne is too new to have much history.

Two miles south-west of the town rises Beachy Head, the last of the Downs headlands—rugged, impressive, magnificent, almost sheer in places, and green-capped with close-cropped turf. In former times there have been many wrecks on its wave-washed base, till the Belle Tout lighthouse came in 1831 to fling across the dark waters its saving light, and the more powerful and more modern one at the base of the cliff, near what is known as Parson Darby’s hole, was erected in 1902 to take its place.

Possibly Beachy Head, which towers above us as we sweep round it, but at a respectful distance from the race off the south ledges, with perhaps a flock of tourists on its summit, having the semblance and proportions of flies so far above the water are they, has inspired more poetry than any other headland of the south coast. Most are cognizant of Mr Swinburne’s beautiful ode “To a Seamew,” which is, alas! too long for quotation, and would be spoiled by omission of a single stanza. But from Richard Jefferies’s “The Breeze on Beachy Head” one can cull some vivid lines, and by them bring the headland to the mind’s eye though so far from it. “But,” he says, “the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze.... It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and the flowers and grass distil it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind swept and washed with air; the billows of atmosphere roll over it.... Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray mushrooms ... or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandize; but this is the land of health.”

One remembers, too, the description of the headland in King Lear. The truth of which, down to the smallest detail, seems to prove beyond question that Shakespeare himself must have visited the spot and have drunk in the salt sea breeze and felt the glorious sun as have other poets and writers.

And thus, as we leave the gleaming headland astern, we make for Newhaven by way of Seaford. The latter has by far the more attractive history, as should naturally follow the distinction of being a “limb” of the Cinque Ports. The cliffs are very fine all along to Seaford, and once a haven of refuge came very near being made at Cuckmere close by, but the advantages or claims, or both, of Portland further west prevailed.

It was on the water between Beachy Head and Newhaven that on June 30, 1690, De Tourville, Admiral of the French fleet, having gained valuable information from a Lydd publican of the division of the English and Dutch sea forces, bore down upon the latter and gave them battle. Outnumbered though they were—the French had eighty-five ships to the Hollanders’ thirty—the Dutch fought gallantly, but suffered a heavy defeat; whilst the English ships to leeward were unable to come to their allies’ assistance until the victory had been virtually won. The English admiral, Lord Torrington, afterwards nearly shared the fate meted out to Admiral Byng sixty-seven years later, but, although committed to the Tower and tried, to William of Orange’s keen disgust he was acquitted.

BEACHY HEAD

Seaford has indeed a chequered history. Like its other stranded neighbours amongst the Cinque and other Ports of the Confederacy, it once possessed its harbour, formed by the Ouse, known even in Roman times. And it sent two representatives to Parliament in the year 1300. Two years later it was commanded to furnish King Edward with a ship for his French expedition, two ships for the King in 1336, and five but eleven years later, so that its growth at that period must have been rapid; but in the reign of the Third Edward the decline of the place was equally marked. It ceased to send members to Parliament, and, with its haven rapidly silting up and the town suffering constant attacks by the French, the place and its inhabitants were soon in evil case. In the reigns of the last-named King and those of Richard II and Henry IV it was repeatedly sacked and burned, and so discontented did the people become with the want of assistance and protection afforded them, more especially in the reign of weak Henry VI, that they were ripe for rebellion, and when Jack Cade appeared they joined him almost to a man.

From this period onwards the Ouse now rapidly filled up, so that there was soon but the mere semblance of a port, and finally the river changed its course, found an outlet near the village of Meeching, and ultimately, in the sixteenth century, formed a harbour at Newhaven, in the mere name of which the downfall of neighbouring Seaford is succinctly told.

The French were not, however, content to leave the poor sea-deserted place alone. They made one of their periodical descents upon it in 1545. But on this occasion, with the assistance of gallant Sir Nicholas Pelham, the invaders were beaten off with heavy loss, the event being commemorated upon the worthy knight’s tomb in the following somewhat halting lines:

What time the French sought to have sack’t Seaford
This Pelham did repel ’em back aboord.

In 1640 Seaford was once more empowered to send representatives to Parliament, and later on amongst those who from time to time represented what had become a Treasury Borough we find William Pitt the elder and George Canning.

The wreckers and smugglers of Seaford during the latter half of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century were scarcely less notorious than those of Hastings, Rye, and other places on the Sussex coast. Many a vessel was lured to destruction, and many a cargo run almost in sight of the authorities who existed to put down these malpractices. From a letter of a gentleman of Stafford, Sussex, to one of the newspapers on September 18, 1783, we extract the following account of smuggling as it then existed. “There is,” he writes, “a most convenient port, about a mile from Seaford, for smugglers to land their goods, and so daring are they become, that a dozen or more cutters may frequently be seen laying-to in open day.” On Tuesday evening, between two and three hundred smugglers on horseback came to Cookmere, and received various kinds of goods from the boats, “till at last the whole number were laden, when, in defiance of the King’s officers, they went their way in great triumph. About a week before this upwards of three hundred attended at the same place, and though the sea ran mountains high, the daring men in the cutters made good the landing, to the surprise of everybody, and the men on horseback took all away.”

It is chiefly from such extracts as that which we have just made that any clear idea can be obtained regarding the prevalence of smuggling and the daring tactics of the smugglers of those times.

The prospect of a French invasion in 1803 and 1804 made Seaford and the immediate neighbourhood a scene of unwonted activity. We are told that the Commander-in-Chief, His Royal Highness the Duke of York, and Major-General Lennox issued orders, which were received by the colonel commanding in the district, to the effect “that the French, should they succeed in crossing the British Channel (not English Channel, mark you), would certainly attempt a landing in Seaford Bay,” and the orders went on to say that a strict and vigilant watch was to be kept up in consequence.

The conduct of the farmers in the neighbourhood in putting up and “finding for” large numbers of troops for a lengthy period was greatly commended by one Lieutenant-Colonel Frith in the following year (1804), and the officers of His Majesty’s First or North Battalion of Hampshire Militia, which had been concentrated in Sussex, on leaving Alfriston. The letter from the lieutenant-colonel in question expresses that “They feel that they have been received as brethren engaged in one common cause, the defence of their country, and all that it contains most near and dear.”

Although the French never succeeded in crossing the Channel in force and effecting a landing in Seaford Bay or anywhere else, it is somewhat startling to read such an extract as the following, also taken from a newspaper of the period: “Dec. 28, 1807. On Saturday morning last a daring attempt was made by a French privateer to capture two loaded colliers, lying off Seaford.... The enemy succeeded in capturing and sending away one, and was proceeding to take possession of the other. The latter, however, fortunately mounted two or three swivels, a well-directed discharge from which, it is supposed, gave an unexpected quietus to several of the assailants.”

Little wonder need there be if folk along the coast went uneasily to their beds in those days, “fearing” (as one picturesque if somewhat reckless writer says) “lest they should wake from their peaceful slumbers to find their throats cut by the French.”

The doings of bold John Whitfield, the notorious smuggler, who for his crimes and constant evasions of the Revenue laws was ultimately outlawed, and made his peace by presenting King George II with a parcel of his choicest wines, “than which the King is said to have declared he never drank better,” would fill a book; but, robbed of his picturesqueness and romance, the said Whitfield was, we believe, a sorry villain, and not above murdering a stray “preventive” were he to come athwart his schemes.

However, Seaford of to-day is very different from Seaford of the early years of the last century. Now it is just a pleasant little town nestling at the foot of the Downs, well-sheltered from northerly, north-easterly and north-westerly gales, and yet, from its exposure to the south and west, enjoying warm and invigorating breezes by turn.

It has few objects of interest in the usually accepted sense of the term, but in Church Street under one of the houses is a most interesting and ancient crypt, which is by some supposed to have had some connection with the Hospital of St Leonard, whilst other authorities think that the crypt once formed a part of the ancient Courthouse or Town Hall. The vaulting ribs are of plain design, and the bosses of the Early English type. This is one of the most important relics of ancient Seaford. Unhappily the church was allowed, during the later part of the eighteenth century, to fall into a terrible state of disrepair. Much has from time to time been done to restore it, but the restorations and additions have not invariably been done judiciously or with knowledge.

Newhaven, though a good harbour—in fact, the only real haven of refuge of any consequence or ease of entrance between Folkestone and the Wight—is not a place in which to waste much time. The town is picturesque in parts (as, indeed, are most ports), but it is not much frequented by any save those brought hither by business or stress of weather. Although, even as Meeching, its old name, it finds no mention in the Domesday Book, there is little doubt that it is a place of some antiquity, for there are early Norman traces in the architecture of its church, and also the remains of an encampment with high earthworks on the land side near the shore on the west bank of the river. The modern town which has sprung up on the banks of the Ouse as one of the cross Channel ports dates its origin to the great storm in the year 1570, during which the course of the river was changed from its Seaford outlet to a more direct confluence with the sea at Meeching. In the year 1881 the town was made a port, and since then has gained considerable standing as one of the most frequented places of embarkation for France and as a depôt for a considerable amount of Continental trade.

It was here that in 1848 Louis Philippe and his Queen, Marie Amelie, landed after escaping from Tréport in a fishing lugger under the unromantic and not easily distinguished names of Mr and Mrs Smith. The Royal fugitives were welcomed by a well-known Sussex character, William Catt by name, who was not only a prosperous miller but a noted fruit-grower. They afterwards took rooms at the Bridge Hotel, kept, as it happened, by a Mr Smith, which circumstance, we are told, “caused his ex-Majesty some considerable amusement and laughter.”

The town has the distinction (like Kingsbridge in fair Devon) of manufacturing “a local tipple of some potency.” The original brewer, Thomas Tipper by name, after whom the concoction, “Newhaven tipper,” is known, died in the merry month of May, 1785, at, as it was reckoned in those times, the early age of fifty-four. The epitaph on his tomb, after reciting various virtues, declares:

The best old stingo, he both brewed and sold,
Nor did one knavish act to get his gold;
He played thro’ life a very comic part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.
Reader, in real truth, such was the man,
Be better, wiser, laugh more if you can.

Local tradition asserts that the said Thomas Tipper was a good friend, too, of the local smugglers; but this in the times in which he lived would not invalidate his claim to have never done “one knavish act to get his gold.” His brew, we are told, was prepared with, and owed its “peculiar charm of flavour” to, brackish water, and it is more, we believe, than a mere tale that George IV, whilst at Brighton, imbibed it freely and with no particular harm. One authority goes so far as to assert “with great satisfaction.”

The church of Newhaven is not only interesting, but has a very beautiful situation on the hillside above the town. The one peculiarity in its architecture which strikes one at first sight is the position of its tower placed at the eastern end, while to the east of the tower is placed a fine semicircular apse—which has its counterpart, with other features as well, in the church of Vainville in Normandy—in which one of the small Norman windows can be seen. The pointed windows are of considerably later date.

The interior stone work, where it has not been carelessly and inappropriately restored, is good. The tower chancel is a very fine piece of work, and has been less disfigured than other portions of the building.

This ancient church might well have been a “sailors’ chapel,” such as one finds in places on the North Devon coast and so frequently along the opposite coast of Normandy; but, so far as one can tell, it had no special significance in this respect, though in the churchyard is an obelisk to the memory of Captain James Hanson, a companion of Vancouver on his voyage round the world, who was drowned with over one hundred officers and men by the casting away of his ship, the sloop of war Brazen, off the Ave Rocks in the year 1800.

The coast-line, when one has got out of Newhaven and has laid a course for Shoreham eleven miles distant, is first a series of lofty chalk cliffs, with breezy uplands stretching inland, and then three or four miles of Brighton and Hove shore and sea-front. A long line of houses, hotels and mansions of so distinct a character that, so far as we know, Brighton is never, at least by seamen, mistaken for any other south-coast town. Of “London by the Sea,” as it has been called, there is neither occasion nor space to speak in detail, but that it is of very ancient origin, though at the present day so ultra-modern, there can be little reasonable doubt. The Burrell MSS tell us that “there are three Roman castra, lying in a line over-thwart the Downs from Brighthelmstone to Ditchelling, from south to north. The first, a large one, called the Castle, about a mile from Brighton eastward, and a mile from the sea.” The name is by some supposed to have been derived from Brighthelm, Bishop of Wells, who was afterwards translated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and in a volume called The Family Topographer occurs the following statement, “Brighthelm was slain on the down immediately above Brighthelmstone, to which place he gave his name.” Upon what authority this statement is made, or whether it was Brighthelm the Archbishop or some other of the fairly numerous Brighthelms who figure in history in Saxon times, we have been unable clearly to discover.

The one important, authentic and romantic incident in connexion with Brighthelmstone is the escape of Charles II from the fishing village, which it then was, to the French coast after many wanderings subsequent to the Battle of Worcester.

The town suffered, as did so many others, from the attacks of the French, and in the year 1545 they made a descent upon it in force. Holinshed gives a very full and detailed account of their proceedings as follows: “In 37 Henry VIII, 1545, July 8, the Admiral of France, Mons. Donnebatte, hoisted up sailles, and with his whole navy (which consisted of two hundred ships and twenty-six gallies) came forth into the seas, and arrived on the coast of Sussex, before Bright Hampstead, and set certain of his soldiers on land to burn and spoil the country; but the beacons were fired, and the inhabitants thereabouts came down so thick that the Frenchmen were driven to their ships with loss of diverse of their numbers, so they did little hurt there. Immediately hereupon they made to the Isle of Wight, when about two thousand of their men landed, and one of their chief Captains, named Chevalier Daux, a Provençois, being slain with many other, the residue, with loss and shame, were driven back again to their gallies.... They disanctioned (disanchored), and drew along the coast of Sussex, and a small number landed again in Sussex, of whom few returned to their ships, for divers gentlemen of the country, as Sir Nicholas Pelham and others, with such power as was raised upon the sudden, took them by the way and quickly distressed them ... they turned stern, and so got them home again without any act achieved worthy to be mentioned.” As this same account goes on to say, “The number of Frenchmen was great, so that diverse of them who were taken prisoners in the Isle of Wight and in Sussex did report they were three score thousand.” Unless this estimate was purposely and grossly exaggerated, the force was one of the largest ever launched against these shores.

A most interesting and curious map, dated “1545 Julye 37 Hen. VIII,” is in the Cottonian Library, and was apparently drawn for the chief purpose of exhibiting the attack to which we have just referred, and to afford a plan of the coast, with the possible end in view of the establishment of fortifications and defensive works. It is quaintly illustrated, and upon the sea are more than twenty ships, the largest with four masts, several three, some two, and the remainder one, upon which is hoisted a huge lateen sail. The decks of the larger ships are raised in two or more tiers at both bow and stern like those of the Roman galleys, and each ship is flaunting half a score of flags and pennons. Some have huge fleurs de lis in gold on blue, others a red cross on white. On the sea, towards the west side of the map, is inscribed the following curious and, we fear, inaccurate information: “Shypes may ride all somer tem in a myle the towne in V fathome water.” On the eastern side of the map is the following inscription regarding the doings of the French: “Thesse grete shyppes rydeng hard abode shore by shoting into the hill and wallies on the towne, so sore oppressed the towne that the countrey dare not adventure to resscue it.”

Then, as regards the land portion of this curious map, at the bottom of the sea near “Hoove” is written, “Upon this west pte may lond C.M. p’sones (100,000 persons) unletted by any p’vision there.” On the hills are several “wynde mylles,” and above them “the becon of the town” blazing away in a dish-like cresset on a high pole. Many of the houses shown are on fire, and a spot is marked by the following announcement, “Here landed the galeys.”

There is on the producer’s part of this map a delightful and utterly reckless disregard for what is commonly known as perspective. The roads are in most cases drawn as though absolutely perpendicular, necessitating the most acrobatic feats of the inhabitants who pass along them. As for the “galeys,” some of them have performed somersaults on landing on the beach, whilst others are tumbling backwards. The houses are drawn rather smaller than the people who live in them, and there are other equally entertaining anachronisms; but this curious production probably served its main purpose, for defensive towers were built and other steps taken to frustrate any further depredations which might be attempted by the French.

Brighthelmstone had its “quiver” at the thought of the Armada, a little less than half a century later. During a false alarm in 1586, when a fleet of fifty sail appeared in the offing, great activity was shown by the inhabitants, who immediately dispatched a messenger to Lord Buckhurst, lord lieutenant of Sussex, telling him of the suspicious vessels, and he promptly assembled all the men he could muster, “with their armes,” and took up a position between Brighthelmstone and Rottingdean. By nightfall we are told his force numbered 1,600 men, and was later on reinforced by the addition of a body of Kentish men. As the fleet made no movement to attack nor any demonstration of hostile intent, at last a fishing boat or two, “with bold men who feared neither death nor capture,” put off from the beach to reconnoitre. They then discovered that the supposed Armada was but the Dutch wine fleet from Spain, held back by the unfavourable direction of the wind from proceeding to their destination up Channel, and thus, so far as Brighthelmstone is concerned, ended its doings with the Armada.

In the terrific storms of December 27, 1703, and in 1705, Brighthelmstone suffered so severely that it is scarcely too much to say that it was ruined. So greatly also did it decline in the next few years that in 1725 the author of A Tour Through Great Britain speaks of the place as “a poor fishing town, old-built on the very edge of the sea,” and goes on to say that it has a likelihood of being soon entirely swallowed up owing to the rapid encroachment of the sea.

With Brighton, as it came to be called later on, in the days when it was emerging from decline and obscurity to flourish under the Georgian patronage it received, and with the Brighton of to-day, which is one of the great seaside resorts of the world, there is neither necessity nor space to deal. We must on to Shoreham, the quaint little fishing village of smuggling days, now threatened in the near future with development as a seaside resort. Here there is a haven into which one can run in stress of weather, although few, we imagine, would choose to remain in it longer than necessary.

In the old smuggling times it was notorious, and even in the present day there are “tub holes” in not a few of the older houses, and not many years ago, in a house near by the church, one such was brought to light when the back part of the building was pulled down. It was connected with the shore by a passage, long ago filled up at its seaward end, and in the latter were found more than a score of “tubs,” and several packages of tea and lace. Of the spirit one who was there states “it was by no means bad, over-woody, perhaps, but still by no means entirely spoiled and certainly not undrinkable.” Of the tea none was of use, and the lace was much rotted, notwithstanding the thick oilskin covers to the bales, and in most instances the rats had made use of it for nesting purposes. In the centre of two bales, however, some yards were found undamaged, which, as the lace was well on for a century old, more than paid for the alterations which the owner of the house was making.

But even Shoreham, straggling and uninteresting as it mostly is nowadays, has figured in what has been called “rustling and purple romance” in the past, for was it not from Shoreham, or, at all events, hard by, between it and Hove, that Charles II escaped? The story of Charles’s wanderings is so well known that there is no need to recapitulate them here, but there is a most interesting document entitled, “The last act, in the miraculous Storie of his Mties escape; being a true and perfect relation of his conveyance, through many dangers, to a safe harbour; and out of the reach of his tyranicall enemies, by Colonell Gounter; of Rackton in Sussex; who had the happiness to bee instrumentall in the business (as it was taken down from his mouth by a person of worth a little before his death),” which in the part referring to the King’s movements at Shoreham is, we think, worth quotation.

We are told that on the evening before his escape, “At supper, the King was cheerful, not showing the least signe of feare or apprehension of any daunger....” The boatman and also Charles’s host were present at supper, the latter waiting upon the King, and then afterwards “the Coll. (Colonel Gounter) began to treat with the boateman (Tettersfield by name, afterwards referred to as Tattersall), asking him in what readiness he was. He answered he could not of (get off) that night, because for more securitie he had brought his vessel into a breake, and the tyde had forsaken it, soe that it was on ground.... The King, then opening the wenddowe, tooke notice, that the wind was turned and told the master of the Shipp. Whereupon because of the wind and a cleere night, the Coll. offered 10ll (ten pounds) more to the man to gett off that night. But that could not bee. However they agreed, he should take in his company that night. But it was a great business that they had in hand, and God would have them to knowe soe, both by the difficulties that offered themselves, and by his help, he afforded to remoove them.”

When, however, all was thought to be settled, the boatman demanded the insurance of his vessel, and, after some demur, Colonel Gounter agreed to this, he placed the figure at £200. Obtaining a promise of this, he yet appears to have raised difficulties in the way of a start, much to the Colonel’s fear and annoyance. The Colonel then appears to have taken a stand by telling the man that there were other boats to be had, more especially after the man had declined to move unless he had Colonel Gounter’s bond for payment of the money.

Then we are told, “In this contest the King happily interposed. Hee saith right (said his Matie) a Gentleman’s word, especially before witnesses, is as good as his bond. At last [delightful phrase!] the man’s stomach came downe, and carrie them he would, whatever became of it, and before he would be taken, hee would run his boat under the water. Soe it was agreed that about tooe in the morning they should be aboard. The boateman in the meane tyme, went to provide for necessaries, so he (the Colonel) persuaded the King to take some rest. He did in his cloaths, and my Ld. Willmot with him, till towards twoo of the morning. Then the Coll. called them up, showing them how the tyme went by his watch. Horses being ledd by the back way towards the beach. They came to the boate, and found all readie. So the Coll. tooke his leave, craving his Maties pardon if anything had happened through error, nor want of will or loyaltie.... The Coll. abided there, keeping the horses in a readiness in case any thing unexpected had happened.

“At 8 of the clock I (the Colonel) saw them on sayle and it was afternoone before they were out of sight. The wind (O Providence) held very good till the next morning, to ten of the clock brought them to a place in Normandie called Fackham (Fécamp), some three miles from Havre de Grace. 15 Oct. Wenseday. They were no sooner landed, but the wind turned and a violent storm did arise soe much that the boateman was forced to cutt his cable, lost his anchor to save his boate, for which he required of me 8ll, and had it. The boate was back againe at Chichester by Friday to take his fraught.”

Then follows a significant note, “I was not gone out of the towne of Brighthelmstone twoe houres but soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man 6 foot and 4 inches high.”

Accounts vary as to whether the King actually came to Shoreham at all. By some it is thought that the day or two previous to his coming to an inn at Brighton were spent at Ovingdean at the house of a Mr Mansell about three miles from Brighton, or what is now Kemp Town.

That the King did not always, after his Restoration, remember those who had been of service to him during the period of his adversity is proved by the story that even Tattersall was forgotten. The old seaman took a curious way of reminding his Sovereign of his neglect. He sailed the boat in which he had carried Charles to Fécamp up the Thames and moored it off Whitehall. The hint was taken. Charles directed that the brig should be taken into the Royal Navy as a fifth-rate ship of war, and renamed her the Royal Escape. Tattersall himself was duly appointed captain with a substantial salary, and a pension in addition of £100 per annum, an amount equal in value to about £380 of present-day money. This was also for several generations paid to Tattersall’s descendants.

An ivy-clad cottage on Southwick Green is still pointed out as that in which Charles slept on the night before his escape to France. It is known as King Charles’s Cottage, but how far tradition is to be relied upon in this instance we are unable positively to assert.

Shoreham harbour formerly was of much greater area than nowadays, when, as one writer puts it, “Nature has been too kind to Shoreham folk by giving them too much land, by taking from them most all the water save that which lies in the channel of the Adur.” In former times, indeed, Shoreham had some reputation for the building of fast-sailing luggers and other craft, many of which, in the last half of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries, were engaged in smuggling ventures and privateering.

And who could blame the descendants of the men who suffered so much in early times from the attacks of their neighbours across Channel if they profited by the purchase of their goods in the shape of cognac and lace, or, at a pinch, helped themselves without purchase when the two countries found themselves at war?

LOW TIDE AT LITTLEHAMPTON

Shoreham privateers were not a whit less skilfully handled and bravely fought than those sailing out of larger and more famous ports of the west country. The town, in Armada times, had furnished a fair share of ships and men with which to fight the Spanish Dons, and the spirit which animated the local seamen of the Elizabethan age was not “dead bones” in those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as is shown by the extraordinary exploits of a certain Captain Gyffard. He was an enterprising man this Captain Gyffard, who when he was ashore (which was not, we are told, very often) had his anchorage at West Blatchington, while he did his seafaring and fitting out at Shoreham. That he was a man of great ambitions we gather from the fact that he had a scheme by which the then Duke of Buckingham was to finance him, and share the spoil. There appeared something dangerously like piracy in the detailed scheme of the worthy captain, and the Duke failed his man. But Captain Gyffard found money and men, and after all many a goodly prize was towed by him into Shoreham.

Another worthy of the town, a certain Captain Scrass, had less nicety of judgement regarding the right of others than we could have liked. One day, whilst cruising in search of plunder aboard his ship, the Dolphin, he espied a Dutch man-o’-war standing up Channel with a prize in tow, which proved to be a Swansea barque. Scrass gallantly went to the rescue, recaptured the Welsh ship and promptly set sail, and towed her in triumph to Shoreham; but, mark you, as his own prize! Poor Powell, her master, was in dire distress, but, notwithstanding his arguments and appeals, Scrass “froze on to his prize,” and refused to give her up, and even her dispossessed captain’s appeals to the Admiralty, made over and over again, had no effect, and he never appears to have received either justice or satisfaction.

Shoreham has had the dubious honour in the past (to be accurate, in 1770) of having its returning officer for Parliamentary elections summoned to the Bar of the House to give an account of his misdeeds. It happened in this way. The Borough in those days sent two representatives to Parliament, and it occurred to a body of ingenious souls that these elections might be made the source of much profit to themselves, so they formed themselves into an organization called the Christian Club! It met at the inn for the reputed purpose of transacting charitable and other highly commendable business. The members were not summoned by the usual means of letters or verbal notice, but by the hoisting of a certain flag on the inn. The funds by which the members used to grant assistance to each other were the proceeds of “rigged” elections. In those days there were comparatively few electors, so that most were members of the Christian Society; but at last their real object was discovered. One of the defeated candidates lodged a petition, and it was then found that the Returning Officer had calmly secured the election of the gentleman who enjoyed (on the payment of an agreed and substantial sum) the good will of the Christian Society members, by the simple expedient of disallowing the votes recorded for his opponent. It is said that this revelation of corruption helped materially the passing of the great Reform Bill. However that may be, the Returning Officer was severely censured, the right of voting was extended to every forty-shilling holder in the Rape of Bramber; and as a punishment no less than eighty-five (or about three-fifths) of the Shoreham “free and independent” electors were disfranchised.

It is New Shoreham that most people see, and that usually passes under the name of Shoreham. The old Shoreham, with its interesting and fine Norman church, is but a tiny place nowadays, famous chiefly for its wooden bridge over the Adur leading to the old smuggling inn known as the Old Sussex Pad, which was burned to the ground a few years ago, and was once the haunt and hiding place of the most notorious smugglers of the district, and literally honeycombed with secret chambers, “tub holes,” and recesses for the stowing away “of humans when there was a hue and cry, and smuggled goods.”

New Shoreham Church, dating from about 1100, is one of the finest in Sussex. It was once attached to the Abbey of Saumur, to which foundation it was presented by William de Braoze, Lord of Bramber.... It is around this church of St Mary that by far the oldest and most picturesque portion of the little town is found. Here the eighteenth-century houses, grey and time worn, and perhaps a little sedate in appearance, are grouped so that they form a little colony of ancient things by themselves, and have a charm which few fail to appreciate. In one of them once lived a certain Captain Henry Roberts, a Shoreham man, who accompanied Captain Cook on several of his voyages, and ultimately died of fever at sea. In others dwelt several merchants of distinction at the end of the eighteenth century, whose wealth rumour asserted was not unconnected with smuggling, privateering, and the slave trade.

Two poets of great distinction have found inspiration at Shoreham (and how many artists with brush and colours we wonder?), and have written of the old church, and the shallow, yellow, and almost currentless stream, which when the tide has rushed Channel-ward is little more than a large ditch, and leaves a great expanse of sand, mud flats, and oyster beds uncovered. The fine poem On the South Coast in Astrophel, and other Poems, by Mr Swinburne is too long for complete quotation. Here, however, is a portion which calls up Shoreham to the memory:

Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with the grace of years;
Shoreham, clad with the sunset, glad and grave with glory that death reveres.

* * * * *

Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven’s the luminous oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds.

Squares more bright and with lovelier light than heaven that kindled it shines with shine
Warm and soft as the dome aloft, but heavenlier yet than the sun’s own shrine:
Heaven is high, but the water-sky lit here seems deeper and more divine.

But one must not linger by the way, for the harbour itself, as we have already said, is not one to remain over long in.

And so up anchor and away with the ebb down the coast; flat and uninteresting now, though in the background at first rise pleasant heights, with Lancing College buildings and Chapel amid some trees on the slope of a ridge above the Adur. That strange conglomeration of derelictions from duties manifold converted into the semblance of quite imposing and sometimes artistic habitations known as “Bungalow Town” is soon passed; and then the serried rows of houses marking Worthing sea-front soon lie stretched out along the low, shingly shore. But there is nothing here to detain us, for Worthing has not much history that concerns us, and is not a port (though a pleasant spot enough and picturesque) with the conspicuous clump of trees marking ancient Chanctonbury Rings to the north, and we are bound for the last haven we shall enter before dropping anchor in the busy waters of Portsmouth Harbour.

Littlehampton is a quaint port on the River Arun, which is so delightful from just beyond Ford Junction onwards. All the way to Pulborough one has flower-decked fields, old and ruined castles, picturesque villages, and historic manor-houses to cause one to stray from the river’s bank on exploration bent. Of course, there is no great depth of water much above Arundel for even small craft; though fairly large vessels can get up as far as Arundel town bridge.

Formerly Littlehampton, which has a narrow but picturesque entry past the jetty with its lighthouse, and the windmill in the background, was a place with trade of some considerable importance, which the rise of Newhaven much injured.

The place, like Shoreham, has attracted many artists, amongst them that charming painter of truly English rural landscapes Mr B. W. Leader, R.A. The town should be celebrated if for nothing else for its sunsets. “Out of Italy,” exclaims one enthusiastic artist, “I have seen no sunsets with such a range and splendour of tints as at Littlehampton in Sussex.”

The town can, however, also lay claim to some antiquity, for an allusion to it appears in the Domesday Book, proving that it was then a place within the usual meaning of the word. But even before then it was known as “Hanton,” was held in Anglo-Saxon times by one “Countess Goda, and furnished land for one plough, with two cottars and one acre of meadow.” For long from its position near the mouth of the Arun it was known as the Port of Arundel, the estuary being in ancient times much wider than one would now imagine. In former times the town seems to have attained to considerable size and importance, owing chiefly to the trade between it and the Conqueror’s Duchy and the passage to and fro “of many notable knights and commoner folk.”

It was here that William Rufus landed in 1097 after one of his periodical visits to his Duchy. And to Littlehampton came some of the prisoners from Crecy, brought hither across seas by Richard FitzAlan, the 13th Earl of Arundel, in 1347. He was wise to bring them if the story is true that their “ransoms were of so great a summe that they served to paye for the building of the Great Hall at Arundell,” and other additions.

Another Richard FitzAlan (his grandson), in the reign of Henry IV, brought no less than eighty French ships captured in the Channel, and laden with 20,000 tuns of wine, into the port; which Froissart averred made it possible to purchase in London the best wine for fourpence a gallon! And at Littlehampton? Well, small wonder that “men and wenches were merry, and had full stomachs and light hearts for many a day thereafter.”

Many other strange things and important personages throughout the centuries were landed at this little Sussex port, amongst them “a great wale,” and Philip Howard, who, after having been taken on the high seas, was brought to Littlehampton, and conveyed thence to London, the Tower, and the scaffold.

Its trade in the Middle Ages would appear from contemporary accounts of its houses, buildings and population, and maps to have been much larger than the size of the place would lead one to presume. In 1672, however, it had only its church, manor house, and fourteen other dwelling houses, and a few warehouses. But during the succeeding hundred years several attempts were made to improve the harbour, and the depth of water over the bar, and from the Grub Street Journal of January 1, 1736, a copy of which, framed and glazed, is now in the possession of one of the inhabitants, we learn “The new Harbour at Littlehampton in Sussex was opened on Monday, and there was 7 feet of water at half spring tide, and 9 feet when the tide was highest, and in all likelihood it will prove the best harbour on that coast.”

But these high hopes were destined to be unrealized, and Littlehampton has made practically no progress as a port during the last hundred years, though its popularity as a pleasant and pretty holiday resort is ever increasing. It was to the Earl of Surrey in 1790 that the town owed its start as a health resort, and after Surrey House was built other fashionable folk resorted hither.

There is still a certain amount of shipbuilding done; but we have never of late years seen any vessel on the stocks approaching in size the craft of 900 tons which were formerly launched. And we fancy the industry—perhaps because of the greater use of steam—is a declining if not a dying one.

With the demolition of the old parish Church of St Mary in 1826 to provide a larger building Littlehampton’s sole really ancient building disappeared. The modern (old style) building does not commend itself to the fastidious in architecture; although it scarcely, perhaps, entirely merits the uncomplimentary epithets which have been applied to it from time to time by architects and others. In it there are a few interesting relics, and fragments of the fine earlier building which was Transitional Norman in character. They include the Norman (some say pre-Norman) font, of bowl-shaped design which fitted it for immersion.

But if the town itself nowadays has to rely rather upon its modern than its old-time attractions, it can boast of a neighbourhood wonderfully rich in beautiful scenery, and historic memories and buildings. A week or even more at Littlehampton can be well spent in visiting such places as Arundel; lovely North Stoke, where the Arun winds at the foot of wooded hills most delightfully; South Stoke; Amberley, with its beautiful church, churchyard, and fine castle; Felpham; and Clymping, with its fortress church, to name but a few.

Most leave the picturesque little port with regret and carry away memories of its sands, edged most delightfully with grass lawns, and backed by pleasant residences.

From Littlehampton onward to Selsey Bill the coast is flat and utterly without scenic interest, though its story is rich with romance. Millions of sea birds feed in the marshes of the Bill, and its immediate neighbourhood, but the seals which are said to have given it its name are those of long ago. Once round the Bill, and Portsmouth is right ahead, with the Wight winking at one in the shimmering haze of a bright summer day.

Chapter III
Portsmouth—Ryde—Cowes—Yarmouth

It is not too much to say that the approach to Portsmouth by sea from the east on a fine summer day, with the Isle of Wight rising from amidst the waste of waters right ahead, looking like a piece of agate gleaming through the sun-born haze, is one of great beauty.

On such a day, indeed, Selsey Bill, and the low-lying, much-broken coast which stretches between it and Southsea Castle, with Hayling Island, in shape like a deformed foot, dividing the entrances to Chichester and Langstone Harbours, seems almost to melt into the sea itself.

In the many creeks of these harbours there are picturesque spots well worth exploring by those who have the time, and for whom the open sea does not possess greater attractions. Of the inlets indicated, Bosham is by common consent the most beautiful as well as one of the most frequented; it can be reached fairly easily, but trouble awaits those who venture in anything larger than a dinghy up beyond the creek. In Bosham Reach many a Danish galley has ridden at anchor, and with the village are linked names great in the dim past ages of history—Vespasian, Titus, Canute, Harold amongst the number. In the interesting and ancient church the great Viking’s daughter lies buried, whilst the bells of Bosham—so the story goes—lie in the fairway hard by Cubnor Point, sunk there when the Danish pirate ship in which they had been placed went to the bottom in judgement for the sacrilegious act. And there were people living not so many decades ago who had heard, or said they had heard, them ringing when the tide rushed out.

So it will be seen that around this sleepy little town, so far removed from the more bustling current of modern life, hangs a savour of old romance. And there are yet folk alive who can yarn of the smuggling days when Bosham and Chichester Creeks harboured many a bold free trader, and saw many a good cargo “run.”

As one passes along this bit of much and deeply indented coast, inland beyond which are the swelling heights of the Portsdown Hills, green-grey and desolate-looking ridges with almost an unbroken summit line, crowned and pierced by many suspected and unsuspected forts, the great naval station for which one is bound climbs up out of the sea ahead; most pictorial at the distance of half a dozen miles; most interesting at close quarters.

Behind the serried rows of houses of the “Service” folk, which almost encircle the matting-like area of Southsea Common, lie vistas of blue-grey roofs of work-a-day folks’ dwellings, and the huge roof spans of the building and fitting sheds of the Dockyard; with here and there masts or some giant crane breaking the sky line above them.

Seen first at sunset, when entering Spithead from the eastward, the glamour of romance—which noonday sunshine is apt to somewhat dispel—seems to hang over the great naval station; and the flat and uninteresting town takes on an element of picturesqueness which doubtless has tempted artists to paint what would otherwise not be very paintable. Southsea beach is much favoured in good weather as a place off which to bring up. But within the harbour—when once its difficult entrance with the tides running all ways inside, and a perfect crowd of launches, ferries, and small craft and outgoing vessels to add to one’s perplexities have been safely threaded—there is good anchorage and much to see.

There is no busier harbour on the south coast than Portsmouth, for in it business and pleasure, war and peace, are indissolubly linked. On the eastern shore is the Naval Dockyard, the steamboat stages, and most of what commerce comes into the harbour; on the western, chiefly construction sheds, slips, fitting-out yards, and industries connected with the pleasure craft which, during the summer months, add such life and beauty to the Solent and home waters generally.

The harbour itself simply teems with life. Not a moment passes throughout the hours of daylight that some craft or other—whether battleship, torpedo boat, destroyer, excursion steamer, yacht, or trading schooner, barque, brigantine, or rust-red collier—is entering or leaving it through the narrow jaws between Blockhouse Fort and Point Battery. A French writer has said “It is the one spot I have seen in England that impressed me with the tireless activity and sense of the nation’s naval greatness.” And after a few days spent in the harbour one realizes the truth of this statement.

If making a lengthy stay one is scarcely likely to find anything approaching a snug berth nearer Gosport or the Hard than up a little distance beyond the entrance to Weevil Lake near the Coal Hulks. If fortunate enough to pick up a mooring buoy here, one is not too far removed from the life of the harbour, nor has one too long a pull down to Gosport or Portsmouth Hard.

But now something concerning Portsmouth and its neighbouring town of Gosport. The name of the latter, a quaint old-fashioned town which is being slowly but surely absorbed by the Government needs, is traditionally supposed to have been derived from the words God’s Port, or the port of safety or deliverance, which was bestowed upon it by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, on his landing, A.D. 1158, after a perilous voyage from the coast of France. There is, however, another version of its origin, which, whilst stating that it was Henry of Blois that bestowed the name, gives as the reason the saving of his brother King Stephen’s life when the vessel in which he was returning from Normandy was wrecked on the coast near Stokes Bay. Actually, it would appear more probable that the name is derived from Gorseport, or the haven among the gorse, with which most of the dry land in the neighbourhood was formerly covered. There is, however, some authorities aver, amongst the archives in Winchester Cathedral a deed by which a grant was made to the inhabitants of the place, enabling them to call it God’s Port.

One of the most remarkable features connected with the harbour is the number of villages which grew up on its shores with the names of which the word “port” became incorporated.

The privilege of holding a market at Gosport was granted to the village by the Bishop of Winchester, who, however, was not entirely disinterested in the matter, as he received the tolls of the old market house. The latter was of wood, and was an interesting building containing in its upper story some apartments which served as offices for the bishop’s baronial court. Unfortunately the old place shared the fate of many other interesting survivals from medieval times in the neighbourhood, and was pulled down in the year 1811, when a more commodious market house was erected nearer the shore.

Portsea, which lies to the north of the railway and Portsmouth Harbour station with Portsea Island, which but for a narrow channel or waterway would be a peninsula, has for centuries been an interesting and important portion of the district nowadays known generally as Portsmouth. Its interest, however, has in the past, as now, been chiefly of a maritime nature. It does not appear to have had any very great importance on account of its trade at any period of its history. But almost from time immemorial fleets have assembled here before setting forth upon expeditions; and hither they have returned, often battered, though generally victorious. Here also armies have foregathered for foreign service, and have returned “from the Wars.” But Portsea never seems to have ranked with Southampton as a mercantile port; it has always been more of a naval and military establishment. Even in ancient times its position must have commended itself to strategists, for in those days it must have been practically impregnable, except at one or two points, by reason of the fact that it was surrounded by water, and the mud and marshland which lay along its shores rendered landing by an enemy extremely difficult, if not impossible, and the approach of craft of any size impracticable, except here and there where the shore was hard, or there was a sandy beach.

Even the Romans appear not to have invaded Portsea Island, for there are no relics of their occupation discoverable upon it. Its slightly elevated plateau was, however, admirably adapted for use as a camp and for the assemblage of armies, and it is doubtless to this fact that the town largely owed its foundation. In Saxon times it was a Royal demesne, but ultimately was given by Alfreda, Queen of Ethelred, and, strange as this may appear, aunt and military teacher of Alfred the Great, to the church at Winchester.

At the suppression of the religious foundations in the reign of Henry VIII it was given to the College of Winchester, into whose possession the greater portion of the land on which Portsea was built, as well as the advowsons of the churches on the island, passed.

Since then, as every one knows, it has become one of the most important sections of the naval and military Portsmouth of to-day.

The mere mention of the latter town, with its many and crowded memories of the past, seems to bear with it a taste of salt air and the invigorating quality of a sea breeze, and there seems little doubt but that the Danes harried Portsmouth on several occasions, as they did most south coast towns of any consequence. And it is also equally probable that it was here that some at least of the galleys with which Alfred the Great formed the nucleus of the English navy were built, and that they sallied forth through the narrow harbour mouth to inflict the crushing defeat upon the marauders in the Solent, which constituted one of the most important of the many naval battles that Alfred fought.

It was near Portsmouth, too, that Harold II’s fleet two centuries later cruised aimlessly about for some time ere sailing northward with the object of preventing the landing of William of Normandy, which took place eastward further up the coast; and it was here, in 1139, that Matilda, daughter of Henry I, landed with a handful of knights, and a few serving men, to attempt to win the English throne; and Portsmouth was also the place of departure for Richard Cœur de Lion on his final expedition to the Holy Land.

Indeed, almost every foot of ground upon which the older portion of the town now stands is pregnant with historic events, and memories of the England of the past which, from the dim ages when Portsmouth began to take shape, has been ever great, upon the narrow and wider seas, save for a short period in the reign of that pleasure-loving monarch, Charles II, when the Dutch swept the Channel.

As one walks its streets memories come to one of the innumerable gallant men—many unsung in ballad and unrecorded in the pages of history, though deserving both honours—who during the past centuries have set forth boldly upon enterprises for the preservation of Britain’s empire of the sea and the maintenance of her honour and glory afloat.

There is the famous “Hard.” Who that has read Marryat’s Peter Simple does not know it, and cannot in his mind’s eye conjure up the picture of the famous place with the pig-tailed “salts” who frequented it in Nelson’s, and Howe’s, and Rodney’s times?

Mudie, in his History of Hampshire, though doing scant justice to the interest and story of Portsmouth, gives a fairly vivid sketch of the famous “Hard” about this period. He writes: “Immediately beyond the gun wharves there is an opening, with the buildings of Portsea on the other side. This is the Common’s Hard, and it and the row (houses) opposite are much devoted to the sale of frippery, so that this is neither the most cleanly nor the most moral spot in England. It is,” he goes on to say, “the great landing-place from the ships in the harbour—at least, for the common sailors and those who keep up intercourse with them.... This common Hard displays no very pleasant scene in times of peace; in war time it must be far worse.”

But even Mudie sees some use in the Hard, though a questionable one, as he adds, “But as such scenes are inseparable from places where sailors resort in great numbers, it is probably better to have it thus concentrated than if it were dispersed all over the town.”

It was not, however, until the reign of King John that the town appears to have attained any great prominence as a shipbuilding port; but during the reign of that monarch, and ever afterwards, there are frequent mentions of it, as such, in the Records. About the same time as the commencement of shipbuilding at Portsmouth we find an account of the assembly by Henry III in 1229 of a great army for his French war in Poitou, undertaken in order that he might recover the possessions which John had lost. The naval preparations for the campaign, however, seem to have been inadequate, as we find the “assemblage of men so great that they were with but difficulty numbered,” but they had to be disbanded for lack of both stores and transport across seas. Here, too (or, to be exact, upon what is known as Southsea Common, nowadays the resort of ogling nursemaids and children when not used for drill), Edward III in the summer of 1346 gathered together the army of knights and fighting men, and good bowmen, upwards of 30,000 strong, which shortly afterwards won for him the stricken field of Crecy against the French army of four times the number. Amongst the 30,000 French who lost their lives was the King of Bohemia, whose crest and motto—three ostrich plumes and Ich Dien—the Prince of Wales afterwards adopted. At Portsmouth, too, in somewhat later times were assembled the armies of John of Gaunt and of Edward IV, both bound for the interminable French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Afterwards Henry VIII in 1545 used the ground as the site of the huge depôt needed for the victualling and fitting out of the hundred high-sterned, cumbersome ships with which he intended to sail and attack the French coast.

The French, however, were already at sea, burning for revenge on account of the English having taken and destroyed part of Boulogne, and suddenly, in the July of 1545, with a boldness which it is not easy for us to understand, the French sailed across Channel with a fleet of considerable strength and lay to just off Brading for lack of wind. King Henry VIII, who was at Portsmouth at the time, and had dined aboard the Mary Rose ere she set out with the rest of the fleet to meet the enemy, was on Southsea Common an interested, if not alarmed, spectator of the Frenchmen’s audacity.

But owing to lack of wind neither fleet became generally engaged, and the affair, which might have been a naval battle, descended to the level of a mere desultory fight between the French galleys and the English ships which had succeeded in creeping out nearest the French fleet ere the wind entirely dropped. The Mary Rose was not one of the ships near enough to take part in the engagement. She was manned, so one authority asserts, with officers and seamen who had so good an opinion of their own importance and skill that they considered themselves “fitter to command than to obey.” The gun ports were opened, the guns run out, and, by carelessness on account of the calm, the latter were not properly secured. As the day wore on, however, a breeze suddenly came, the ship heeled over to it, and in consequence the windward tier of guns crashed across the deck, causing the ship to heel still further over with the great additional weight. The lee ports were suddenly dipped under water, the sea rushed in, and a few moments later the great, unwieldy ship sank with 600 on board of her.

It is said that the watchword of the fleet on that memorable occasion was “God Save the King,” and the pass words, “Long to reign over us.” Some authorities assert that to these words may be traced the origin of our National Anthem. How true this view may be it is not easy to say.

There have been other disasters near the same spot, too; notably the loss of the Royal George, the 108-gun ship of Rear-Admiral Kempenfeldt, which sank at Spithead on August 29, 1782, whilst heeled over for the repair of a pipe. All hands were aboard to the number of about 600 souls, including women and Jews. Also there was the sinking of the Newcastle, which went down with her crew in 1703; the loss of the Edgar and 400 lives by the blowing up of her powder magazine in 1711; and that of 98-gun line-of-battle ship Boyne from a similar cause in 1795.

War always brought stirring times for Portsmouth, for though, perhaps, the hum and bustle was not equal to that of to-day’s stress and hurry, these things are, after all, comparative, and the seamen of “Bluff King Hal’s” time worked probably with as good or better will than those of our own in manœuvring the galleons and caravels, which must, as one writer says, “have been fickle craft in all save a beam wind.”

Leland when he visited Portsmouth found it a place of great interest. For one thing, he saw the old ship, Henri Grace de Dieu, in the dock, which seems to have impressed him greatly. As he says, it was “one of the biggest ships that has been made within the memory of man.” He also saw the great iron cable which was used for blocking the harbour entrance in times of feared attack. A similar contrivance to that in common use, for example at Dartmouth, and Fowey, in those days. Regarding the town itself Leland is not very enthusiastic, for he calls it “bare, and little occupied in time of peace.” which presents a striking contrast to what it was even in Nelson’s day, when “the great activities incidental to a seagoing and naval nation were ceaselessly going on.”

Southsea Castle, which owes its origin, as do so many other similar fortresses along the south coast, to King Henry VIII, was already in existence when Leland paid the place his visit. It was built about 1540, and in that time was probably accurately described by him as a “ryghte goodlye and warlyke castill.” Here Leland’s spelling varies from that of his own when describing other castles. But spelling in those days was often not an author’s strong point. The castle, to which Henry paid several visits, seems to have served its purpose for about a century after its erection, as it was immune from attack; but in 1626 it fell a partial victim to fire and had to be rebuilt.

The most stirring period of its history is that of the Civil War, when Colonel Goring was supposed to be holding the town for King Charles. Its armament for those days was fairly strong, consisting as it did of a dozen 12-pounders and other smaller pieces, besides a good supply of “hand guns, pikes, swords and other weapons of offense.” The Governor was a Captain Chaloner, who, on the night when the Parliamentarians came to attack it, had spent the evening in the town carousing with Colonel Goring and returned to his post the worse for drink, and had to be awakened out of sleep on the approach of Parliamentarians to the attack. He promptly made the best terms for himself that he could, and even went the length of drinking confusion to the King. Gallant Colonel Goring made an attempt to retake the place, but meantime it had been strongly garrisoned and so successfully resisted the Royalist attack. The capture of the castle sealed the fate of the town, which had been besieged for a month.

For a second time in its history, rather more than a century later, the danger was to come from within. In the year 1759 some soldiers were filling cartridges by the aid, it is supposed, of a “naked light,” when the open powder barrels exploded, with the result that the castle was almost destroyed. It was, however, once more rebuilt and afterwards was used as a prison. At the time of the dreaded Napoleonic invasion the Government of the day, realizing the importance of the place from a strategical point of view, made several additions, and strengthened it materially, amongst other things fortifying the ramparts. Nowadays it is not possible to speak very authoritatively of its strength; but its usefulness has since the beginning of the nineteenth century been from time to time assured by additional armament and works.

The records of Portsmouth and its Harbour have not always been creditable. There have been mutinies, treasonable firing of the dockyard, and even assassinations in its streets, stirring the inhabitants to the core, and leading at the time to much excitement and gossip.

The most tragic event in the town’s history was the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham whilst he was at Portsmouth engaged in gathering together a second force for the relief of La Rochelle, then besieged by Cardinal Richelieu.

The house in High Street in which the Duke was fatally stabbed by the fanatic, John Felton, on August 23, 1628, although much altered, is still standing. One thing should be noted. The house was never (as has been frequently stated) an inn named “Ye Spotted Dog,” but a private residence, at that time owned by a Captain Mason, then Governor of Southsea Castle, who afterwards became famous as the founder of the town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, U.S.A. The assassin, who struck down the King’s favourite after the Duke had become unpopular on account of his arrogance and two unsuccessful wars undertaken at his instigation, was a lieutenant in a foot regiment. It is supposed that, being overlooked for promotion and arrears of pay due to him, somewhat preyed upon and may even have unhinged his mind. Be it as it may, on a fine August morning he gained entrance to the Duke’s temporary residence, and, finding him standing in the hall, as he was about to start to visit the King at Southwick, he stabbed him. So swift and silent was the blow that for some moments no one recognized the murderer. “Then amid great confusion, and the piercing shrieks of the Duchess and her maid, Felton stepped forward and acknowledged the crime.”

It was with difficulty that he was saved from immediate execution, but the reprieve was not for long. He was, however, for the time protected and taken to London for trial. He was executed at Tyburn on November 26 in the same year, and his dead body was exhibited as a warning on Southsea Beach. The site of the gibbet where Felton hung rotting in chains is near Clarence Pier.

He must have been a man of resource and some considerable daring, for when he was promised the rack by the Earl of Dorset if he did not disclose the names of his supposed accomplices, he successfully put an end to the possibility of his being racked by declaring that if put to the torture the first name he would mention would be that of the Earl of Dorset himself!

Viewed in the light of the present day, another crime, though a judicial one, committed at Portsmouth was the execution of Admiral Byng “for not having done his utmost to take, seize and destroy the ships of the enemy” during an engagement with the French off Minorca on May 20, 1756. Latter day historians appear agreed that at most his was an error of judgement; but in those times the nation generally was subject to what modern writers term “nerves,” and just then popular feeling would scarcely brook the news, let alone the fact, of a defeat or a drawn battle. Be that as it may, the Admiral was brought to trial, condemned, and on a bleak March morning in 1757, “when the sea and sky were grey as though in dudgeon at the crime,” he knelt blindfolded upon the deck of the Monarque at Spithead, and, after letting fall his handkerchief, fell pierced by five bullets. He was less a criminal than one of those periodic scapegoats sacrificed to veil the errors of greater and more powerful men. Voltaire gives a cynical account of the episode in his Candide, remarking, amongst other things, that if Byng did not approach near enough the French, neither did they draw near him, adding that in England it was thought advisable to shoot an Admiral now and then to encourage the rest!

Less than twenty years later the dockyard had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. In the year 1776 James Aitken, known as “Jack the Painter,” set alight to one of the sheds, happily with little result as regards damage done. Arson in those days, in fact until the middle of the last century, was a capital crime, and Aitken was condemned and duly hanged by being strung up to the masthead of the Arethusa sixty feet in the air, and afterwards was hung in chains near the mouth of the harbour. A lurid sidelight upon the doings and morals of those times is afforded by the circumstance that the skeleton was ultimately stolen by some sailors and pledged in satisfaction on a drink bill at one of the Gosport inns. “Truly,” says a somewhat censorious writer of the period, “these sailormen being neither better nor worse than the soldier men neither fear God nor man.”