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Louis took his final departure in the following year. This, remarks Mr. Cooper, is the first mention found of Rye as a place of landing or embarkation, and not Winchelsea. In 1247 King Henry III. seeing the importance of Winchelsea and Rye, which had hitherto belonged to the Norman abbey of Fécamp, took them into his own hands, giving in exchange the manor and hundred of Cheltenham, the manor of Slaughter, and the hundred of Salesmanbury, all in Gloucestershire, and the manor of Navenby in Lincolnshire. He granted to the barons and bailiffs of Winchelsea the farm of their town; and empowered them by charters of murage to improve its fortifications.

But these marks of royal patronage seem rather to have roused a spirit of independance than to have been received with true feudal submission. Like the citizens of London, the barons of the Cinque Ports were among the most active supporters of the popular party headed by Simon de Montfort and during the two years of Montfort's supremacy they enjoyed many marks of his favour. Henry de Montfort was made Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle: and the household-book of the Countess of Leicester, his mother, records that she three times feasted the burghers of Winchelsea in the summer of 1265. After the battle of Evesham, the younger Simon de Montfort fled to Winchelsea, and endeavoured, by means of the fleet, again to make head against the royal authority; but, when he had fled to France, Prince Edward took the town by assault, making the resistance it had given him, and the piracies for which its inhabitants were notorious, the excuses of a sanguinary

vengeance.

The old town of Winchelsea had scarcely recovered from this severe punishment when it became evident that it could not much longer withstand the continual inroads of the sea. It had often suffered from the violence of storms, particularly in the years 1250 and 1252; and some thirty years later the resolution was taken for its removal to a more secure position.

The first Winchelsea stood on a low flat island, at the mouth of the estuary of Rye, three miles distant from the

hill upon which the second town was placed, and separated by a wide waste of waters from all the neighbouring lands, except by a lingula on the west. The site, which was submerged in the thirteenth century, began partially to reappear towards the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth, was gradually recovered and fenced in, and now constitutes the Camber farm estate, of a fine rich alluvial soil.

Full particulars are preserved of the measures taken for the foundation of new Winchelsea, and it is remarkable how correct a report of them was traditionally given to Leland. He says:

Syr

"The oulde toune of Winchelesey of a vj. or vij. yeres together felle to a very soore and manifeste ruine, by reason of rages of the se, and totally in the tyme of the aforesayde vj. or vij. yeres. In the space of these aforesayde yeres the people of Winchelesey made sute to kyng Edward the first for remedy, and a new plot to set them a new towne on. Whereupon the kyng sent thither John Kirkeby bishop of Ely and treasurer of England, and vewid a plot to make the new toune of Winchelesey on, the wich was at that tyme a ground where conies partely did resorte. John Tregoze, a knight, was the chief owner of it, and one Maurice, and Bataille abbey. The kyng compoundid with them; and so was there vij. score and tenne acres limited to the new toune, whereof part is and part in hanging of the hille. Then in in the kynges mede withoute the toune, the tyme of the yeres aforesayde the king set to his helpe in begining and wauling of new Winchelesey: and the inhabitants of olde Winchelesey tooke by a litle and litle and buildid at the new toune. So that wythyn the vj. or vij. yere afore expressed the new toune was metely welle furnishid, and dayly after for a few yeres encreasid."

It is interesting to find the old antiquary's accuracy in this statement confirmed in all the more important particulars by existing records relating to the foundation of the new town. The earliest of these is dated, as he says, six or seven years before the final destruction of old Winchelsea. From among the records of the Exchequer, preserved at the Carlton Ride, Mr. Cooper has printed the substance of a very curious return made in 20 Edw. I. (1292), which has the following title:

"These are the places set out, enfranchised, and on which a rent has been put, in the new town of Winchelsea, which is just now built, by the mayor and twenty

four jurats, and by Sir John de Kirkeby, bishop of Ely, on the part of our lord the King, commissioned to set out, enfranchise, and set a rent on the same places."

Leland states correctly that Sir John Tregoze was the chief owner of the land. The whole was nearly 150 acres, and his portion was 65; but the portions belonging to John Moris and to the Abbat of Battle were small; the former less than five acres, the latter only one and three quarters. The next owners in respect to quantity to Sir John Tregoze were John de Langherst (35 acres) and John Bone (24 acres); which two names are those which occur in the earliest document found in connexion with this affair, whereby the King directed his steward Ralph of Sandwich to negotiate for their lands, in the year 1280. By letters patent, dated 27 Nov. 1281, the King directed his justices itinerant to asset the purchased lands in Iham as building plots to the barons and good men of Winchelsea. On the 13th Oct. 1283, they received a new charter from the King, which confirmed to them the same franchises and customs which they had enjoyed in their former locality. On the 8th April, 1287, the King purchased of William de Grandison and Sibilla his wife, who was the younger daughter and co-heir of Sir John de Tregoze, the manors of Iham and Iden, granting them in exchange the manor of Dymnok (now Dimmock, in Gloucestershire), and a rent of 461. 6s. 34d. in Dartford. Finally, by a writ dated 23 June, 1288, the town was granted to the barons to be held in fee-farm, as the old town had been; and on the 25th July bishop Kyrkeby gave seisin to the commonalty of Winchelsea of all their lands and tenements, as enumerated in the roll already mentioned, with absolute and quiet possession rent-free for the first seven years. The rents subsequently to be paid amounted to 147. Îls. 5 d.

In the mean time the storm occurred, on the 4th Feb. 1286-7, which finally overwhelmed the old town, together with all the marsh-lands between Cliff's

End near Fairlight, and Hythe. On this occasion the sudden stoppage of the mouth of the Rother at Romney, and the junction of its waters at Appledore with those of the estuary at Rye, must have altered entirely the face of the country.

The new town, erected on the hill of Iham, was planned with remarkable regularity, the streets crossing at rightangles, like those of our trans-Atlantic colonists. There were eight principal streets or highways, and the tenements were arranged in thirty-nine squares or quarters. The roll in the Exchequer contains the names of the tenants in every one of these quarters, and a very curious exhibition of personal nomenclature it presents.

There is an interesting passage in the history of Thomas of Walsingham, which describes the new town of Winchelsea shortly after its erection, on occasion of an extraordinary escape which Edward the First experienced there. This occurred in August 1297, when he was preparing an expedition to Flanders. He was sojourning at the neighbouring mansion of William de Echingham at Odymere, from whence, on the morning of this incident, he repaired to Winchelsea in order to inspect his fleet :

"The miracle of the king's preservation.

"The town of Wynchelsey, where the port was, is placed upon a hill of abrupt declivity, on that side which regards the sea, or overhangs the anchorage; wherefore the road which leads from the open town to the port goes not straight forward, lest those who go down should fall headlong from the too great steepness, or those who come up should be forced rather to climb by their hands than walk erect; but it winds downwards, turning obliquely now to one side and now to the other. Moreover the town is girt not with a stone wall, but an earthen mound, erected on this

abrupt side as in woods to the height of a

man's body, between the bulwarks of which a view is afforded of the shipping. The king therefore having entered the town, whilst he was riding near these bulwarks, viewing the fleet which lay below, it chanced that he approached a windmill

* Jeake's Charters, &c. of the Cinque Ports, p. 103.

In p. 31 Mr. Cooper has inaccurately stated this as "his manor of Dymmok, in the manor of Dartford, Kent ;" and the date is misprinted 1281. There is a writ of Quo Warranto 15 Edw. I. whereby William de Grandison proved his right to courts leet and free warren in the manor of Dimmock, co. Glouc.

(of which there are many in that town), when his horse, taking alarm at the noise of the sails, the king urging him to proceed both by whip and spur, leaped suddenly over the mound: where upon the whole multitude of horse and foot which followed the king stood mute with astonishment, no one thinking it possible that he could have escaped with his life. But such was the divine mercy, that the horse, though he leaped from such a height, lighted on his feet upon the road which we have described, which being somewhat softened by the recent rains, he slipped for the distance of twelve feet, yet without falling, and being soon after turned by the king's rein, he again went up to the gate, through which the people who stood by were at once astonished and delighted to see the king return in safety, regarding his preservation as only arising from divine interposition."

The new town soon realised the best hopes of its founders. The port was in a flourishing condition; trade and merchandise flowed into its waters, and gave to the inhabitants an apparent security for a lengthened pros perity. When an expedition under the command of Edmund the King's bro-, ther was equipped for Gascony in 1294, fifty ships were furnished by the Cinque Ports, of which Winchelsea supplied thirteen, Sandwich twelve, Rye seven, Dover seven, Romney five, Hythe three, and Hastings three.

But during the wars with France Winchelsea suffered frequently from attacks of the enemy. An inquisition taken in the 20th Edw. III. returned that, in ninety-four houses in Winchelsea, there was not then, and had not been for several years before, anything upon which a distress could be levied for the King's rents, no one having been able to inhabit them; and that fifty-two tenements and one mill at Rye, which had been burnt by the French, were not rebuilt.

However, the town struggled on, with all the vicissitudes incident to maritime places; and, though all its thirty-nine quarters were perhaps never

again occupied, yet its fleets often sailed forth in the pride of their confident strength, and scoured the narrow seas, or descended in time of war on the

opposite coast of Normandy. Nor did they always abstain from very sanguinary conflicts with their own countrymen. During four years of Edward I. no fewer than 206 Yarmouth men were killed by the men of the Cinque Ports in the Swiney, and 144 out of it, 280 Suffolk men, and 387 Norfolk men. The South Saxons seem to have got the better of the East Anglians, for during the same years only 306 men, of which number 99 the Cinque Ports had lost, in the whole, were of Sussex, and 122 of Kent. It was during one of these quarrels that a bailiff of the Cinque Ports was killed by one of Yarmouth, for which the latter was hanged.

These feuds were the consequence of disputes in fishing; but occasionally such conflicts were the result of mere wanton bravado. Leland* tells us how that

"The shippes of Fawey sayling by Rhie and Winchelsey about Edward the III. tyme, would vayle no bonet beyng required, whereupon Rhy and Winchelsey men and they fought, when Fawey men had victorie, and thereupon bare their armes mixt with the armes of Rhy and Winchelsey, and then rose the name of the gallaunts of Fawey."

In the reign of Henry V. the town of Winchelsea was so far decayed that one of the reasons assigned for a new grant of murage was that the old site had become too large for necessary habitation. Both Rye and Winchelsea were burnt by the French in the 26th or 27th Hen. VI.; and soon after that time, in consequence of the continued retirement of the sea, ships were usually unladen at the Camber or at Rye. In a return made 15 Hen. VII. it is stated that there were in Winchelsea no persons who had above 401. in goods, and Rye was the seat of

*Mr. Cooper, p. 73, gives this passage as if quoted from Carew's Survey of Cornwall but the fact is that Carew recounts the story with a variation, amplifying it considerably, and ascribing that part of it which relates to the arms of Fowey to an earlier incident. He says, "Once, the townesmen vaunt that for reskuing certaine ships of Rye from the Normans in Henrie the third's time, they beare the armes and enjoy part of the privileges belonging to the Cinque Ports, wherof there is some memorie in their chauncell window, with the name of Fisart Bagga, their principal commander in that service."

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