Sandwich, Kent

“ But the revelation that he, a man of over sixty, had a mistress permanently residing in his house led to an outburst of indignation on the part of the public who hated him. On the fall of the North administration in March 1782 Sandwich retired in great measure from public life, and though he accepted the office of ranger of St. James's and Hyde Parks under the coalition, it was but for a few months. During the following years he resided for the most part at Hinchinbroke, and died in London on 30 April 1792.
No public man of the last century was the mark of such bitter, such violent invective. ”

“ I do not think any stranger has ever been known to find his way through Sandwich without making one or two false turns, for its streets are winding and deceptive. The houses of the middle ages are not represented in them at all, and it is a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Sandwich you see, not the mediæval port. It is, in general, a Dutch effect, as if those settlers under Elizabeth had imported their views upon domestic architecture and had successfully imposed them upon the town. ”

“ There still exists a gate named after Lord Sandwich. “When at Lisbon my Lord sent over presents of mellons and rare grapes to his Countess in London; the grapes so fine that Mistress Pepys packed some up in a basket to send to the King’s Majesty.” Lady Sandwich also received a civet cat, parrot, apes, and many other eccentric proofs of her Lord’s remembrance, which she showed to Mr. Pepys when he dined with her at the Wardrobe. ”

“ She was the second daughter of John, Earl of Rochester, by Elizabeth Mallet. She married Edward, third Earl of Sandwich, in 1691. As we have mentioned in the short notice of his life, the marriage was very unhappy, and Lady Sandwich’s conduct in every respect most reprehensible, in spite of her numerous panegyrists. She was a brilliant member of society, and we are told that at the early age of ten years, she already showed a great taste for reading, and had begun to cultivate several foreign languages. ”

“ It was then noted that it was an unheard-of innovation that the great seal should be in lay hands (Wykes, sub an.; Foss, iii. 150) . On the death of the bishop of London in 1273, Sandwich received the custody of the temporalities of the see. In 1274 he and his wife were summoned to attend the coronation of Edward I (Madox, History of the Exchequer, i. 71) . He received the custody of the castle of Arundel in 1277, the Lord Richard being a minor, and from that year until 1282 was escheator south of the Trent with the title of ‘senescallus regis’ (Abbrev. Rot. Orig. i. 21) . ”

“ The existence of a shoal, or the shifting of a sand-bank, may mar or diminish the prosperity of a city; and to the great local changes which this part of the Kentish coast has undergone, the decay of Sandwich, as a harbour, is chiefly to be ascribed. Where fleets of merchantmen once rode in safety; where the busy scenes of lading and unlading once offered pictures of maritime prosperity, the fishing-craft of the place can hardly find anchorage, and all the characteristics of a flourishing port have disappeared ”

“ Lady Sandwich went to Paris not very long after her marriage, and St. Evremond, whose admiration she appears to have shared with the Duchesse de Mazarin and Ninon de l’Enclos, thus speaks of her in a letter (without date) to the latter: “Le Docteur Morelli, mon ami particulier, accompagne Madame la Comtesse de Sandwich qui va en France pour sa santé. Feu Monsieur le Comte de Rochester, Père de Madame Sandwich, avoit plus d’esprit qu’homme en Angleterre. Madame de Sandwich en a plus que n’avoit Monsieur son père; aussi généreuse que spirituelle, aussi aimable que spirituelle et généreuse. ”

“ The management is worthy of Lord Sandwich, and like him. It may sound odd for me, with my principles, to admire Lord Sandwich; but besides that he has in several instances been very obliging to me, there is a good humour and an industry about him that are very uncommon. I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due. Nobody but he could have struck a stroke like this.
Yesterday we sat till eight on the address, which yet passed without a negative - we had two very long speeches from Mr. Pitt and Mr. Grenville ”

“ During the war with the Dutch in 1664–1665 Sandwich commanded a squadron under the duke of York and distinguished himself in the battle off Lowestoft on the 3rd of June 1665. When the duke retired later in the same year he became commander-in chief, and he directed an unsuccessful attack on some Dutch merchant ships which were sheltering in the Norwegian port of Bergen ”

“ Sandwich is commonly held up as an example of a Cinque Port utterly decayed and dead as Queen Anne, or as the Pharaohs, or anything or anyone of whose demise there cannot possibly be any doubt, but there are new houses and other unmistakable signs of a living existence there, while here the town, reduced to the merest existence, simply continues mechanically, like a clock not yet run down. ”

“ After dinner he and I alone awhile and did joy ourselves in my Lord Sandwich's being out of the way all this time. He concurs that we are in a way of ruin by thus being forced to keep only small squadrons out, but do tell me that it was not choice, but only force, that we could not keep out the whole fleete. He tells me that the King is very kind to my Lord Sandwich, and did himself observe to him (Sir G. Carteret) , how those very people, meaning the Prince and Duke of Albemarle, are punished in the same kind as they did seek to abuse my Lord Sandwich. ”

“ Rupert was supposed to have a personal aversion to Sandwich, which may or may not have been well grounded. [23] Sandwich's character has been variously represented, and, whether justly or not, his honesty was certainly suspected. His own creature, Pepys, a little later confided to his diary his concern for his lord in "that cursed business of the prizes," and his vehement disapproval of the whole affair. [24] On the other hand, both Evelyn and Clarendon esteemed Sandwich highly. ”

“ In any case it was probably considered unadvisable to employ him again afloat at that time, and of any civil employment he may have had we have no information. In the next war, 1672, when Sandwich again hoisted his flag, Cuttance was no longer with him; but whether by reason of death, sickness, or his holding some office on shore, does not appear. ”

“ As you proceed, with the reedy dykes on the right, towards the red, clustered roofs of Sandwich, ahead, there rise away across186 the marshes to the right the grey, solitary walls of Richborough, the place that was once the Roman port and fortress of Rutupiæ, guarding this entrance of that ancient channel, just as Regulbium kept watch and ward at the other. The river Stour, which here flows in an extraordinary looped course, prevents access to Richborough this way, and one must come to it through Sandwich. No one, once arrived on that spot, can be insensible to its peculiar charm ”

“ Pepys, who met him 5 and 8 Feb. 1668, calls him a ‘very pretty and able person, a man of very fine parts,’ and says that Sandwich had sent over the highest commendations of his abilities and trustworthiness (this has been erroneously applied to Sidney, lord Godolphin) . In the spring of 1669 he returned to Spain as envoy extraordinary, Lord Sunderland being ‘ambassador extraordinary,’ and in 1671 he became ambassador. Immediately afterwards he applied, during a dangerous illness, for admission to the Roman catholic church. ”

“ I honour Lord Sandwich [172] for his wise and generous contempt of money in a point in which there are other things superior to it; he bears an excellent character, there is much prudence in knowing how to separate one’s particular happiness from that which is reckoned so in the world’s opinion: if Lord Sandwich takes greater pleasure in the conversation of a fine woman than in viewing a collection of medals and pictures, he is right to prefer Miss Dolly Fane with £5000 to Miss Spinckes with £50,000.... He has a good estate sufficient for the becoming state of a nobleman.... ”

“ Lord Sandwich might serve as a model for a man of business. He rose early, and till a late dinner dedicated his whole time to business; he was very methodical; slow, not wearisome; cautious, not suspicious; rather a man of sense than a man of talent; he had much real good nature; his promises might be relied on. His manners partook of the old Court, and he possessed in a singular degree the art of attaching persons of every rank to him. Few houses were more agreeable or instructive than his Lordship’s ”

“ The valiant Earl of Sandwich, like most other eminent and successful men, had his enemies and detractors, and foremost among these was Sir William Coventry, the secretary to the Duke of York; “a sullen, ill-natured, proud man, whose ambition had no limits, nor could be contained within any.” He had prevented Prince Rupert from being associated with Lord Sandwich in the command of the fleet, not to favour the earl, but to mortify the prince. Clarendon pronounced him a man “who never paid a civility to any worthy man, but as it280 was a disobligation to another, whom he cared less for.” ”

“ Sandboys, like a sensible woman, turned her attention to the contents of the ale-cask, and then discovered that some evil-disposed person, whom she strongly suspected to be Master Jobby—for that young gentleman began to display an increasing enjoyment in each succeeding catastrophe—had left the tap running, and that the cellar floor was covered three inches deep with the liquid intended to take off the dryness and somewhat sawdusty character of the oat-cake, which, in the absence of any wheaten bread, now formed the staple of their morning meal. ”

“ Sandy, whose coarse good nature has been dropping from his very finger ends in the way of stones thrown at the jolly fishes, has the smallest possible aptitude for the domestic art he is practising. Neither does his fancy take at all to the fair ways of neatness. Beyond frying pork and fish in one pan, and boiling potatoes in one pot, and making tea in one kettle, as a housewife steeps her simples, and every separate vessel, fakir-like, to sit from meal to meal in undisturbed repose, wrapped in the dingy mantle of its own defilement, Sandy has no ambition. ”

“ His wife, overpowered by this addition of the loss of dinner to the loss of tea, did not hesitate to suggest to him, that perhaps it might be as well, if they consented to do like the rest of the world, and betake themselves for a few days to London. For her own part, she was ready to make any sacrifice, even to face the London dirt. But Sandboys would listen to no compromise, declared that greatness showed itself alone in overcoming circumstances,—and talked grandly of his forefathers, who had held out so long in these self-same mountain fastnesses. ”

“ The port of the town of Sandwich, was for centuries one of the best and most frequented in the realm, producing to the revenue of the customs between sixteen and seventeen thousand pounds. But with the decay of her haven, commerce declined, and the revenue became so small, "that it was scarcely sufficent to satisfy the customer of his fee:" a dull and melancholy gloom is now spread through all her streets, and around her walls, where, during the times that her haven was good and her woollen manufactures were prosperous, naught was visible but activity, industry, and opulence. ”

“ In spite of a keen desire for money-making, Sandy was a generous man at his own table, and he had a way of serving his family that was the admiration of the whole mill staff. If a man but held up his plate as a slight indication that he was ready for more, the host could flip him a slice of beef or pork with the dexterity of a sleight-of-hand magician. ”

“ Ken said. “Now Mr. Watch Crystal is going inside too.”
“Come on,” Sandy said.
They began to move toward the cafeteria.
A hasty glance through the wide plate-glass front of the big self-service restaurant assured them that it was very crowded.
“I think it’s safe to go in,” Ken muttered, “as long as we’re careful to keep out of their way.”
“This is the first time I ever went into a restaurant with my mind on something besides food,” Sandy said. “Go ahead. I’ll follow you in a minute. We’ll be less conspicuous that way. Meet you at the tray counter if the coast is clear.” ”

“ But even this knowledge of the healthfulness and desirability of the tricycle does not make a hard piece of road any easier. After a night's rest at the hospitable house of an aunt of Mattie Hyde's, the club find themselves, next day, among the "Sandwiches," as Starrett facetiously dubs the town of that name which is divided into North, East, South, and West Sandwich. And there they come upon a wooded tract that sorely taxes their endurance and presents the most formidable obstacle they have yet encountered. The sand is impassable ”

“ He happened to know what is called a "sandwich man"—that is to say, a man who walks about with signs hanging behind and before him. One day this man made him a proposition. The sandwich man knew a baker who, with his two sons, carried on a small business in a cellar. The baker was fond of reading, but had no time for it, and as he and his sons had to bake their bread early in the morning, he proposed, through the sandwich man, to employ William Chambers as reader. ”

“ I came back into this place on purpose to be of some good, and yet I donʼt seem to be doing any good at all.”
“Why, my dear Bateman, you are doing as much good as [165] anyone else,” Sandwich laughed. “Nobody else performs any out–of–the–way feats, and why should you be called upon to do so? You do as much as anyone else.”
“Yes, I know all about that; but, you see, every day our position gets a little worse. The French, the Americans, and the Germans are all hard pressed; the Japanese, the Italians, and the Austrians are gradually losing ground in the Fu ”