the unarmed congregation, committing sad havoc, and carrying off whole ship-loads of wines and stores. The slain on this occasion were buried in St. Giles's churchyard, and the lane adjoining it still bears the name of Dead Man's Lane. It is almost needless to add that the English fleet made ample retaliation by descents on the coast of Normandy.

On another occasion, seventeen years later, the French, having sacked and burnt the town of Rye, tried their hands once more against Winchilsea; but, thanks to the Abbot of Battle, with but small success. Speaking of this attack, and the defence of the town by the worthy abbot, old Fuller says, in his quaint language, 'I behold in this abbot the saver, not onely of Sussex, but of England. For as dogs, who have once gotten an haunt to worry sheep, do not leave it off till they meet with their reward; so, had not these French felt the smart as well as the sweet of the English plunder, our land, and this county especially, had never been free from their incursions.'

Together with Rye, and the other Cinque Ports, from Edward I. down to the reign of Charles II., Winchilsea used regularly to send one and sometimes two bailiffs to Great Yarmouth, to superintend the rights of the port men at the herring fishery. Great quarrels frequently arose on these occasions, and it is quite certain that the men of Winchilsea were as forward as any of their brethren in their attacks on

the men of Yarmouth. On one occasion (25 Henry III.), the Earl of Hereford was ordered to distrain upon the Barons of Winchilsea for one hundred marks, for injuries done in the fair at Yarmouth. In the reign of Edward I. we read of several brawls. between the same old foes, and of several acts of blood-stained piracy on the part of the men of Winchilsea, which show that they had not forgotten the lawless ways of their pirate forefathers. Those who wish to pursue the subject further will find a long catalogue of offences done by the men of Winchilsea, sufficiently black to call for the intervention of the hangman, by referring to Swinden's History of Yarmouth,'

The town, however, continued to be a convenient and customary place of embarkation to the Continent, and especially for pilgrims,' down to the time of Henry VI.; but with this reign its prosperity departed. Indeed, from after the commencement of the Wars of the Roses, Winchilsea affords very few materials for history, though Mr. Cooper records the fact that 'the

In the earliest sea song, preserved in a MS. of the time of Henry VI. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and printed by the Percy Society in Mr. Halliwell's early naval ballads, it is evident that Winchilsea held a prominent place among the southern ports:

For when they do take the see,
At Sandwyche or at Wynchilsee,
At Brystow, or where that it be,
Theyr herts begyn to fayle.'

The last entry of a pilgrim to the Continent via Winchilsea, is the name of William Wey, Canon of Eton, in the year 1456.

marauding propensities of its inhabitants remained unaffected by the gradual decay of their town.' In the reign of Henry VII. it is clear that most of the wealthy merchants had abandoned the place, and Rye gradually superseded it as a seat of trade after the erection of Camber Castle, halfway between Winchilsea and that town, by King Henry VIII. in 1538-39. The dissolution of the religious houses, following close on the retirement of the sea and the withdrawal of trade, completed the ruin of the place.

For a moment there shone a faint gleam of prosperity on Winchilsea, when Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to the place, in order to satisfy her own royal eyes as to whether it would be possible to deepen the channel of the tidal estuary, and so to save the fleeting commerce of the town, in pursuance of a request of its inhabitants. The maiden queen came, saw, and admired; and pleased with the goodly situation, the ancient buildings, and the civic dignity of the town, she christened it, half in jest and half in earnest, 'Little London.' But she did nothing further to save it from ruin.

Since that day the sea has receded full another mile, and the town has dwindled down into a mere rural village. It was not well suited for the manufacturer, even when the weald of Sussex abounded in wood; and all attempts to introduce local manufactures of salt, charcoal, cambrics, lawns, and crape, and also smelting and tan works, have either been

failures, or at the best have met with only a partial

success.

Under a large tree still standing in St. Thomas' churchyard, John Wesley preached to a numerous audience in the last year of his life, or at all events when eighty years old.

I will close this paper with a few lines quoted from C. Knight's' Tourist's Companion':-'Of all the decayed old towns we have seen along the coast, Winchilsea is the best worth visiting. It owns itself a wreck, and does not try to get rid of its ruins or to put on an appearance of smartness. The wide space which the town originally covered helps now not a little to increase the reverend air it carries as a ruin. You wander about its outskirts among pleasant byways, and are startled to come upon some fragment of a chapel or an old religious house, when you thought yourself a long way beyond the limits of the town. And the more important remains are much above the ordinary grade. The church is yet in the centre of the great square, which remains unencroached upon, though only partly surrounded by houses, and serves as a scale by which to judge what must have been the size of the town in the olden days.'

IT is well known that as the glory of the ancient Roman settlement and fortress of Richborough 1 waned, the town of Sandwich rose gradually into fame and wealth. It lies about a mile and a half south of Richborough, and nearer to the sea, on the southern bank of the Stour, at the point where that river takes an easterly instead of a southern course. It is surrounded on every side by a verdant lea of meadows, occupied as marsh and pasture land, above which rise the church towers and quaint red roofs of the town, after a fashion which gives to the place the air of a foreign city, and you might easily fancy, as you look upon it, that you are beholding one of the mediæval cities of Ghent or Flanders. A nearer view, however, will serve to dispel the illusion; and the stranger, on entering its streets, will find himself in a place 'Gabiis desertior atque Fidenis'; somewhat like old and decayed Winchilsea,2 only that it lacks 2 See page 70.

1 See below, page 129.