Cinque Ports

“ PENCESTER, PENCHESTER, or PENSHURST, STEPHEN de (d. 1299) , warden of the Cinque ports, was a member of an old Kentish family that took its name from its chief seat, the manor of Penshurst, or, as it was more often called in the thirteenth century, Pencester or Penchester. In the latter part of Henry III's reign this manor was held by John de Bellemains, a canon of St. Paul's, who was Stephen's uncle and trustee. Soon after the barons' wars Stephen appears as holding important offices under the crown, to whose service he devoted the rest of his life. ”

“ When the people of the Cinque Ports saw the French fleet, and knew it to be commanded by Eustace the Monk, they said: "If this tyrant land, he will lay all waste, for the country is not protected, and our king is far away. Let us, therefore, take our souls in our hands, and meet him while he is at sea; and help will come to us from on high." To one exclaiming, "Is there one among you who is ready this day to die for England?" ”

“ That should be The Duke of Suffolk? FIRST GENTLEMAN. 'Tis the same-High Steward. SECOND GENTLEMAN. And that my Lord of Norfolk? FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes. SECOND GENTLEMAN. [Looking on the QUEEN] Heaven bless thee! Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look'd on. Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel; Our king has all the Indies in his arms, And more and richer, when he strains that lady; I cannot blame his conscience. FIRST GENTLEMAN. They that bear The cloth of honour over her are four barons Of the Cinque-ports. SECOND GENTLEMAN. Those men are happy; and so are all are near her. ”

“ In return the ports were given great freedom and privileges; their people were known as "barons," were represented in Parliament, and at every coronation bore the canopy over the sovereign, carrying it on silver staves having small silver bells attached. The canopy was usually afterwards presented to Becket's shrine at Canterbury, and its bearers after the coronation dined in Westminster Hall at the king's right hand. But the glory of these redoubtable Cinque Ports has departed. Dover is the only one remaining in active service; Sandwich, Hythe, and Romney are no longer ports at all ”

“ It is mentioned, with Sandwich and Romney, in the Domesday-book, as a privileged port; and is said to have enjoyed, from an earlier period, sundry privileges and immunities in common with those two towns, on consideration of supplying a certain number of ships and mariners for the defence of the adjacent coast. In the reign of King John, Dover received a charter as one of the Cinque Ports; and in several succeeding reigns, its shipping and mariners were frequently employed in the fleets assembled to convey English armies to France. ”

“ The men of the Cinque Ports seem to have carried on a certain amount of privateering at various times, but there have been times when their skill in seafaring and their undoubted courage have been employed in work of the utmost value in the defence of England. ”

“ Their celebrated haven, situated between Kent and the Isle of Thanet, which for position, extent, and safety, exceeded any which we have remaining, is now lost; and of their other ports, some are completely annihilated, others have become very inconsiderable, and all very greatly impaired.
Under our Saxon ancestors, by whom the Cinque Ports were first chartered, all the havens were open and in good condition, in which state they were found by the Normans, who confirmed to the Ports their ancient privileges. Through several centuries their prosperity continued to increase ”

“ In 1052 just before the conquest, the Cinque Ports are noted as possessing many ships, but English craft do not as yet appear to have ventured outside the Bay of Biscay to the south, whilst navigation to the north was, it is probable, mainly in the hands of Scandinavians. In 1095 is a curious notice of joint ownership of ships, when we hear that Godric, who later became a saint, a native of Walpole, in Norfolk, held one-half of one ship and quarter of another. ”

“ For a race of men who first swoop down on to a strange coast, vanquish the inhabitants and then settle down to live among them, are rather different from a body of men who lie in wait to capture ships as they proceed on their voyages.
The growth of piracy in English waters certainly owed much to the Cinque Ports. In these havens dwelt a privileged class of seamen, who certainly for centuries were a very much favoured community. It was their privilege to do that which in the Mediterranean Cicero had regarded with so much disfavour. ”

“ Lympne, which is now 3 m. inland, is thought to have been the original harbour which gave Hythe a place among the Cinque Ports. The course of the ancient estuary may be distinctly traced from here along the road to Hythe, the sea-sand lying on the surface and colouring the soil. Here are remains of a Roman fortress, and excavations have brought to light many remains of the Roman Portus Lemanis. Large portions of the fortress walls are standing. At the south-west corner is one of the circular towers which occurred along the line of wall. ”

“ On the 11th, having sailed a considerable distance towards the American seaboard, he decided that the land he had sighted was the island he sought, and thereupon shifted his helm for it; and on his arrival, passing by the great bay, he saw, to his own and to the great delight of his crew, the Cinque Ports quietly lying at [Pg 115] anchor, she having made the land three days before. Both vessels were heeled and refitted, which, with the watering of them, gave the crews plenty of employment; but whilst this was doing another quarrel happened, this time between Captain Stradling and his men. ”

“ Romney comprised Lydd, Dungeness, Eastweston, and Promwell; Hythe took in merely West Hythe, and to Hastings belonged the remote and completely inland village of Bekesbourne.
The story of the Cinque Ports is, above all else, an object-lesson in the supreme, although generally unacknowledged, importance of the trading, or middle classes, without whose enterprising activities and courage and resource the nation long since would have ceased to exist. ”

“ For thither do resort all the fishermen of the Cinque Ports and the rest of the West Country men of England, as far as Burport [Bridport] , and Lyme [Regis] in Dorsetshire: and those herrings that they do take they do not barrel, because their boats be but small things, but they sell all unto the Yarmouth herring-buyers for ready money. ”

“ The court is an ancient one. The judge sits as the official and commissary of the lord warden, just as the judge of the high court of admiralty sat as the official and commissary of the lord high admiral. And, as the office of lord warden is more ancient than the office of lord high admiral (The Lord Warden v. King in his office of Admiralty, 1831, 2 Hagg. Admy. Rep. 438) , it is probable that the Cinque Ports court is the more ancient of the two.
The jurisdiction of the court has been, except in one matter of mere antiquarian curiosity, unaffected by statute. ”

“ The orders received by the men of the Cinque Ports were21 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. ”

“ In the following January he incurred Wolsey's displeasure; but Anne Boleyn, whose aunt had married a Cheyne, secured his restoration to favour, 'and used very rude words of Wolsey;' the circumstance was regarded as a presage of Wolsey's fall. Cheyne naturally approved of Henry's divorce, and in 1582 entertained the king and Anne Boleyn at Shurland Castle. On 17 May 1536 he was appointed warden of the Cinque Ports; he profited largely by the dissolution of the monasteries in Kent, and on 9 March 1538-9 he was made treasurer of the household (Wriothesley, Chron. i. 64) . ”

“ The total number of ships mustered was seven hundred and ten; these were equipped with a full complement of fighting men. The [28] "five Cinque Ports and two Ancient Towns," together with Seaford, Faversham, and Margate, contributed one hundred and five ships ”

“ The original Cinque Ports were Dover, Sandwich, Hastings, Hythe, and Romney. At a later period Rye and Winchelsea were added, under the special designation of the “Ancient Towns.” Each197 port had its subsidiary “members.” Thus the “members” attached to Dover were Margate, Folkestone, Faversham, and St. Peter’s, Broadstairs. Those belonging to Sandwich were Deal, Walmer, Stonar, Ramsgate, Sarre, Reculver, Fordwich, and Brightlingsea, away in Essex ”

“ If the tremendous evils to which I have called attention as existing less than a hundred years ago, when the business of the port was not one-seventh of its present magnitude, were the result of overcrowding, it stands to reason that, in the absence of dock accommodation, the increased business must have gone to the out-ports, and, failing the necessary accommodation there, have located itself on the Continent. ”

“ There is not one worth looking at. They have made one or two artificial ports, and they are no great things; there is no getting out or getting in. In fact, they have no harbours in the Channel, while we have the finest in the world; a peculiar dispensation of Providence, because it knew that we should want them, and France would not. In France, what are called ports are all alike,—nasty, narrow holes, only to be entered at certain times of tide and certain winds; made up of basins and backwaters, custom-houses, and cabarets; just fit for smugglers to run into, and nothing more ”

“ It is commerce if that is the way you look at things; an ice-free port, tingling with every modern activity, where lumber and grain and fruit and all the riches of Canada are swung to Europe and the West Indies, and scores of ports about the world, and where, when winter grips the immense St. Lawrence, passengers can slip, free of the ice, to the ocean tracts.
It is the gate of pleasure. The entry port where the sportsman and the holiday maker from America or Europe can start for the fine fishing streams, where salmon and trout are kings ”

“ And from the uttermost parts of the world vessels come daily throbbing and sailing up the Narrows. From far trans-Pacific ports, from the frozen North, from the lands of the Southern Cross, they pass and repass the living rock that was there before their hulls were shaped, that will be there when their very names are forgotten, when their crews and their captains have taken their long last voyage, when their merchandise has rotted, and their owners are known no more. ”

“ A range of sand banks run parallel with the coast for many miles, but several channels intervene, giving sufficient depth for vessels of the heaviest draught at high water, at which time the Mersey presents the most interesting and striking scene,—particularly when a westerly wind favours the arrival of the numerous fleets destined to this port, bearing the flags and freighted with the produce of all nations that have found a place in the chart of commercial enterprise. ”

“ No Commissioner shall act out of the place where he is resident.No Commissioner shall act out of the place where he is resident. Provided always, that no Person to be appointed a Commissioner by virtue of this Act shall have Power or Authority to act in any other Port or Place than that in which he is resident, or from which his usual Place of Residence is not distant more than One Mile ”

“ The general idea of a great seaport that the boys formulate from a study of the great ports of the world, is that it is favorably situated on the coast, where it can draw unto itself the products of the near hinterland and distribute them over the world, and that it gathers together the products of the lands beyond the seas, and distributes them over the near and far hinterland. ”

“ East and west, north and south, runs the love of the stars and stripes, and the desire to do honor to those who have helped win for this flag prestige and respect among other peoples in other climes. The seamen of this old port were traders, it is true, but they lent to commerce an epic quality, and because they steered so many brave ships to ports where no other American topsails had ever gleamed, they deserve to be remembered among those whose work left its imprint far beyond the limits of the town or coast they called home. ”

“ Ordinarily, the terms 'coaster' and 'coasting vessel' are applied to vessels plying exclusively between domestic ports, and usually to those engaged in domestic trade, as distinguished from vessels engaged in the foreign trade, or plying between a port of the United States and a port of a foreign country. ”

“ Those belonging to the merchants, that is, ships and brigs of a certain size, have already begun to frequent the ports of China, Java, the coast of Coromandel, Bengal, and the Isle of France, availing themselves of the lucrative freights which formerly enriched and encouraged foreign shipping. The other class of vessels, although perfectly adequate to the coasting trade, cannot in general be applied to larger enterprises, on account of their not being sufficiently strong and capacious. ”

“ The greater part of the vast literature which has accumulated on the question of the identity of the Portus Itius is obsolete;2665 and it is now sometimes taken for granted that the choice is restricted to Wissant and Boulogne. Nevertheless, as I am determined to set the question at rest, I shall examine the claims of three other ports, which, in recent times, have found advocates whose names command respect,—the estuary of the Somme, Ambleteuse, and Calais.
The question began to be seriously discussed in the fifteenth century. ”