A SHORT

HISTORY OF KENT

FOR THE YOUNG.

BY

HENRY FRANCIS ABELL.

With Map and Plans.

ASHFORD: KENTISH EXPRESS (IGGLESDEN AND CO.), LIMITED.

LONDON: HOULSTON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS.

1895.

A HISTORY OF KENT FOR THE YOUNG.

” O, noble Kent, this praise doth thee belong,

Most hard to be controlled, impatientest of wrong,

Who, when the Norman first with pride and horror swayed,

Threw’st off the servile yoke upon the English laid,

And with a high resolve most bravely did restore That liberty so long enjo3’ed by thee before; Not suffering foreign laws should thy free custom bind, Then only shewd’st thyself of ancient Saxon kind. Of all the shires be thou sir-named the free,

And foremost ever placed when they shall reckoned be.”

Drayton, “ Polyolbion.”

” A knight of Cales,

A gentleman of Wales,

And a laird of the north countree :

A yeoman of Kent

With his yearly rent

Will buy ‘em out all three.”

Old Rhyme.

"Kent claims for itself the first blow in battle against alien enemies.”

Fit7.-Stephen, 1:1th Century.

INDEX.

CHAPTEE. PAGE.

{empty}I. Early Kent 1

II. The Roman Invasion - - 7

III. The Kingdom of Kent - 14

IV. The Noemans —– 23

{empty}V. The Plantagenets - - 30

VI. The Tudoes 51

VII. The Stewaets - - 66 VIII. The Beunswicks - 79 Appendix - - - - - 88

ERRATUM.

Chapter I., page 1, line 5, for “ Kainte “ read “ Kante.”

PREFACE.

Two chief reasons for this simple “ History of Kent for the Young “—that is, not for children, but for lasses and lads who already know at any rate the outline and the main features of the History of England :

First.—A hearty belief in the wholesomeness of broad minded local patriotism.

Second.—A sorrowful conviction that the majority of

English men and women know very much less about

their own country in general, and their own

neighbourhood in particular, than they do about

distant and foreign lands.

The chief difficulties which have faced me in this compilation, for it is but a compilation, have been to select judiciously from a huge mass of material, and to present the selections in a simple and interesting form.

I cannot even claim originality of idea for this little book, for I was first inspired to undertake its composition by “ A History of Cornwall for my Children,” written by a great friend, which seemed to me to fill up so nicely a long standing gap in our system of home educ(ation that I resolved to ‘pay it the sincerest tribute in my power—to imitate it.

In addition to the usual authorities I am indebted for much information about the Weald to Mr. Robert Furley’s work on that district of our county; and in order to be as accurate as possible I have visited personally almost every place, great and small, associated with our county history.

H. F. ABELL.

Kennington, Ashford,

1895.

HISTORY OF KENT.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY KENT.

The meanings of the names of places is so interesting and valuable a study that I think, before you start upon the history of this grand old county of ours, you should know that the word “ Kent “ means “ corner,” coming from the German “ Kainte,” and still existing in the word "canton,” such as the canton of our n.itional white ensign, —the Union Jack in the corner, and the “ cantons “ or divisions of Switzerland. I like this derivation better than from the Celtic “ caint,” meaning “ open country,” if only for the reason that ancient Kent had very little open country at all.

It is always a bold and difficult matter to speak about events which happened in the long-ago ages in countries about which no regular histories were written, and so I don’t ask you to believe as undeniable what I am going to say about the first mention of the county of Kent in ancient times. I only tell you what is the belief of more learned men than myself who have tried to make a study of the subject.

i. 9

HISTORY OF KENT.

So it is said that about four hundred years before Christ, Pythias, a mathematician belonging to Marseilles, then the Greek colony of Massalia, landed in Kent; and more, to show you how absurd it often is for people to talk about old things as if they were always better than what we are accustomed to, just because they are old things, he is said to have observed that even then—more than two thousand years ago—the grain gathered from the great wheat fields of Kent was thrashed under cover because there was so little fine weather.. So the next time you hear people whimpering for “good old-fashioned weather “ tell them about Pythias.

Our country was at that time only known to the civilized world as the land where tin was to be found, and the Phœnicians, one of the most interesting of ancient people, had a regular trade with Cornwall, and brought the tin for shipment to a place called Mictis, or Ictis, which may have been the Isle of Thanet, although some people think it to have been the Isle of Wight, or St. Michael’s Mount, off Cornwall.

To show how little was known of Brit.ain, even by later writers such as Str.ibo, Diodorus Siculus, and Ptolemy, it was believed to be the end of a vast continent stretching away northward into the shades of eternal night, until the Roman Agricola, in A.D. 80 or thereabouts, sailed round it and proved it to be an island.

Another old story says that Kent got its name from Canutus, a follower of Brutus, the Trojan, who sailed here from Greece, settled, and founded a line of Kings. This, I tell you candidly, you need not believe.

The first real knowledge we get of Kent is from that wonderful book, the Commentaries of Julius Cæsar.

In the year 55 B.C. he came over to see what sort of a country Britain was. The Romans, like we English, were always looking out for new countries to conquer and settle, and no doubt Cæsar, having heard of the tin trade, thought that there might possibly be something else worth having in the country. At any rate, he came over and found our land inhabited by people of the Belgic tribe of Gauls, barbarians of course, but I don’t think quite such barbarians as we are taught to believe, for they had a distinct religion of their own, with gods—Taramis, the god of thunder, answering to the Roman Jupiter; Teutates, the god of journeys; Hesus, or Camulus, the god of war; Beleus, or Belinus, the chief of all, god of the sun and of fire; Cama, or Diana, and so on. Moreover, they could work skilfully in bronze, and went to war in chariots—a very sure proof that they had made some progress in manufacture.

I am not going to bother you about the Druids, for the learned men of to-day are beginning to doubt if Cæsar found any Druidism in England at all, although it possibly lingered in Wales, whither he did not penetrate.

Now, before we go any further, I want you to knowsomething about the appearance of the Kent to which Julius Cæsar came, for, of course, it was entirely different from what it is now.

Scientific men tell us that not a very long time ago, compared with the age of our earth, England and Europe were joined together by land. In Cæsar’s time the English Channel at its narrowest point was much shallower than it is now, and even in the sixteenth century the Kentish coast people used to speak of a ridge of land between Folkestone and Boulogne, called the “ Ripraffs,” which at a low spring tide was only covered by fourteen feet of water; and of another between Dover and Calais, wdiich was called the "Vane”—now marked as the Varne shoal. The Island of Thanet, best known to you perhaps as having Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs upon it, was really an island when Cæsar came, and the present narrow stream of the Wantsum was half-a-mile broad. Richborough, which is now a long way from the sea, was a place of arrival and

b 2 departure for ships until the beginning of the seventh century, and even in the time of Henry the Eighth, about 1515, there were men living who had seen laden barges pass f rom Richborough to Reculver. At any rate, the Channel was important enough as a water way to make the Romans secure it by building a great fortress at each end of it—at Reculver on the north, and at Richborough, where the two sand spits of Ebbsfleet and Sandwich almost met together and made a narrow entrance. Minster was a port of the Isle of Thanet, and had a bay before it. At Sarre, where the river Stour fell into the Wantsum channel, was a ferry; and the river Stour was navigable for ships as far as Fordwich, which remained the port of Canterbury until the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The great Marshes of Romney, Denge, Guildsord, and Walling, which we may call Romney Marsh, were a tidal morass; that is to say, a vast mud flat alternately covered and uncovered as the tide rose and fell, and no doubt at not a very remote time before Cæsar came was a regular bay of the sea.

Mr. Furley in his book upon the Weald of Kent, to wliich I owe a good deal of what I shall tell you, stays :—

"All Romney Marsh proper (the part between Hythe, Romney, and Appledore) was re-claimed (changed from a mud flat into pasture) by the erection of the Rhee Wall from Appledore to Romney, but by whom the Wall was erected is uncertain The Marsh was certainly under cultivation in the time of the Romans, as Roman remains are found extensively over the whole area.”

So this Rhee Wall, which is now marked by the line of the road from Appledore to New Romney and is still called the same, was the boundary line between the meadow land and the marsh land, of which the northern limit is marked by Appledore and the western by Rye. South of the Marsh was a great bank of shingle extending from where Rye now is to where the mouth of the Rother then was, and much of this still remains, although, of course, the Marsh has long been drained and made exactly’ like the land on the other side of the Rhee Wall. I have tried to show this on my map, so look at it.,

4

The river Rother, which now runs out to sea at Rye, and for some distance forms the boundary of our county, ran, until a great storm in the reign of Edward the First, by Appledore and out to sea at New Romney, forming a bay called Romney Hoy. Hythe was a sea port almost to the time of Queen Elizabeth.

When Cæsar came, and during the Roman occupation perhaps, the Rother flowed from Appledore round the edge of the Marsh to Hythe. At any rate, there was water communication between Hythe and Appledore along the course of the present Military Canal, for you may still see the remains stretching down the hill side from Lympne of the Roman Castle of Portus Lemannis, now called Studfall Castle, and we read that in 893 the Danes sailed from Lympne to Appledore, which they burned.

You perhaps know how far from the sea New Romney now is. Well, although I don’t think that Old Romney was ever an important place, in about 1070 New Romney became a port, which was famous for two hundred years later. We read of ships being captured in its harbour, and in 1168 Thomas a Becket attempted to escape to France from New Romney, which belonged to his Archbishopric, but was driven back by a storm.

This has nothing to do with the Romans, but I want you to get a clear idea of the very different appearance of our county in their time.

The whole of the west part of Kent from the edge of Romney Marsh to Sevenoaks was thick forest, part of the great Andreds Waid, or Forest of Anderida. This was called the Weald of Kent, and although the forest has disappeared you may still trace its exact extent by the names of places ending in “den”—a wooded hollow or valley; “hurst,” meaning thicker forest; “ley”—open glade; “ chart “—forest. All the rest of Kent up to the line of the old Dover Road, the Roman Watling Street, was thickly wooded, without being actually forest, except along the courses of rivers like the Medway, the Stour, the Darent, and the Cray, which were pleasant, fertile valleys.

The whole of the country north of Watling Street between Canterbury and Dartford was, except where between Canterbury and Faversham the road cut through the Blean Forest, marsh land.

To make it clearer for you I have drawn a map which I hope gives fairly the appearance of the county under the Romans. You will notice the names of still existing towns and villages in.slanting letters; but, of course, many of them were not built until long after.

CHAPTER II.

THE ROMAN INVASION.

Now, I do hope that the words “ Roman Invasion “ won’t dishearten you and make you feel beforehand that you are going to be told a lot of dry, prosy, uninteresting stuff about a time so long ago that you cannot imagine anything interesting in connection with it. Believe me, if you are patient, and if you think as you read, you will be astonished how very much more interesting the Roman invasion of our county will soon appear than much of the gossip about something which happened yesterday in your own neighbourhood.

When you go, let us say, to Richborough or to Studfall Castle at Lympne, or to the great silent camp at Keston (about which I will tell you a funny story by-and-bye), or when you look along the Stone Street running straight as an arrow flight over hill and dale, and you think of the wonderful people who built them, and of the splendid efforts of the old men of Kent to prevent them from building them, and reflect that they are still after all these hundreds of years strong and massive, they will appear to you something more than mere masses of stones and bricks, or mounds of earth, or a long, hard, dusty road.

However, I promise not to keep you very long in Roman Kent, absorbingly interesting as it is to me, or we shall have no time for the still more interesting and valuable history of later times.

I said that no doubt Julius Cæsar had an idea that the land of tin was also the land of something else worth getting hold of, especially when we read that the Britons were warned of Cæsar’s intentions by merchants from Gaul, which seems to show that already there was commerce between our island and the continent. The Britons sent an embassy over to Cæsar. The ambassadors were received civilly by the great Roman, and they were accompanied home by an officer named Comius, who had instructions to keep his eyes open, and to induce the Britons to become the allies, the friends of Rome, which would have been a very convenient arrangement for Cæsar, inasmuch as under pretence of friendship he could carry out his plans of making Britain a Roman colony without the bother and expense of fighting.

But the Britons did not enter into the arrangement at all, for no doubt the Gaulish merchants had told them what they might expect if they made the acquaintance with a man who was master by force of arms of half the known world.

Cæsar left Portus Itius—probably the watering place Wissant, near Boulogne—and in nine hours was at Dover or Deal, the standard bearer of the Tenth Legion being the first man to land. This landing was done in the face of the Britons, who were assembled on the shore, but who very soon attacked the Romans. There was some hard fighting in which the chariots, to the wheels of which were affixed blades, did good work, and later on the Seventh Legion, acting as an outpost, was surprised and almost cut to pieces.

From all of which Cæsar decided that if Britain was to be a Roman colony it would have to be fought for. He only remained twenty-five days, and, having found out what he wanted—the temper of the Britons and a good place for landing, returned on September 20th to Gaul.

Next year, B.C. 54, Cæsar planned a serious expedition, and had boats specially built for the landing of troops.

He landed, probably at Deal, and marched straight

inland, apparently unopposed, until he found the Britons entrenched—that is to say, assembled behind earth works and ditches at Bursted, which I think must be the Bursted near Upper Hardres, as it is on a straight line for London, known even then as “ the city of ships?,” and no doubt much associated with the trade of the country.

The Seventh Legion—the same which had been so unkindly treated by the Britons before—cleared the natives out very soon, but this important post was hardly won when the news Ccime that a great storm had almost wrecked the fleet lying off Deal. So the Romans were obliged to stay until their ships could be repaired, and Cæsar built a great camp somewhere about Deal and Walmer, and prepared himself for anything which might happen.

Meanwhile the Britons assembled again under a Prince Cassivelaunus and attacked the Romans. The Romans won the victory, but paid dearly in human life for it, and marched on to London, crossing the Thames at Cowey Stakes, near Walton.

Cassivelaunus saw that his half-disciplined, rudelyarmed men were no match for the terrible method of war which the Romans had learned by the experience of centuries, and so he determined to worry and harass them with that irregular sort of warfare carried on everywhere but in the open country, which was afterwards used so effectively by the Spaniards against the French in the Peninsula, and by the French against the Germans during the last great war. At the same time four kings of Kent, named Cingetorix, Carnilius, Taximagulus, and Segonax, attacked the Roman camp at Deal, but they were beaten. So Cassivelaunus offers to surrender. Cæsar accepts his submission, very gladly no doubt, orders him to pay an annual fine, and sails for Gaul—gladly enough also.

After this the Romans left us alone for nearly a hundred years. In A.D. 43, when Claudius was emperor, the Romans landed under Aulus Plautius, but the Britons seemed to have profited in the meantime by the lesson taught them by Julius Cæsar, for they beat the Romans everywhere, and Aulus Plautius was obliged to shut himself up in a great camp, which some learned gentlemen say was that camp in the park at Holwood, near Keston, and from here he sent urgent messages to Claudius for help.

I happened to be at Keston a year or two back, and after wandering about the War Bank and examining the few Roman remains there I went into a farmhouse at the foot of the hill. I asked a man there what he thought the stones on the War Bank were. “ Why, sir,” he said, “ they say a gentleman named Cæsar used to live there with his family.”

” That was a very long time ago,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “it were. I’ve lived in these parts a matter of forty years and I never knowed anybody as knowed him, so I lay it were more’n a hundred years ago ! “

I didn’t tell him it was nearer two thousand than a hundred, for he might have thought I was trying to make fun of him.

Well, Claudius came in obedience to the call, and we are told that he brought elephants with him, but you may just as well believe that he brought Krupp guns with him, for the biggest ships of those days were not so big as many a modern yacht.* However, elephants or no elephants, he beat our men of Kent, and after them the rest of England so quickly and easily that within a very short time Britain was added to the list of Roman colonies. Julius Agricola followed him, and under his prudent government Britain

• In 1080 the tumulus on Parliament Hill, Highgate, was opened, and in it was found the skeleton of a mammoth, with the head of a spear. This was stud to be an elephant—hence the idea that the Romans brought elephantB. became quiet and prosperous; her commerce was developed, and she got to be quite reconciled to foreign rule. He it was who first proved Britain to be an island by sailing round it.

Kent was not behindhand in the general development of manufactures and trade. In the Marshes, on the edge of the river Swale, which divides the island of Sheppey from the mainland, are still to be seen remains of the old Roman pottery works, whence came that blue-black LTpchurch ware, as it is called, which must have been highly thought of, as specimens of it have been found amongst Roman ruins all over England, <and even in France, {empty}.although it is not so fine as the ware made at Castor in Northamptonshire.

Chalk was dug at Dartford, Crayford, and Chislehurst, and exported to the continent, and in the country of Zealand have been found altars dedicated to the goddess of the Kentish chalk workers. We know that the Romans carried on a large manufacture of iron in the great forests of the neighbouring county of Sussex, and traces of the same industry have been found in the Weald of Kent, although not to so great an extent—notably at Frittenden. Corn was sent in large quantities to Gaul, whilst the oysters of the Kentish coast were famous even in Imperial Rome.

The Roman remains in Kent, if not amongst the finest in England, are interesting as being the earliest. Ruins of the great Roman castles at Portus Lemannis—Lympne, and at Rutupiœ—Richborough, are tolerably extensive. Of the third great castle, at Regulbium—Reculver, only a couple of walls remain, but two pillars which formerly decorated one of its public buildings may be seen standing in the pleasant garden behind the baptistery at Canterbury Cathedral. At Dover Castle you may see the remains of the only Roman lighthouse in Britain. Bits of Roman work appear in the walls and in all the old churches of Canterbury and Rochester, but there is nothing of such surpassing interest as the Roman villa at Bignor in Sussex, or the relics of such towns as Silchester, Wroxeter, and the places along the Roman wall in Northumberland and Cumberland.

You see, as Kent was to the Romans what it has been to all other foreigners and will be to the end of time, the stepping stone, the doorway into England, it was very necessary that this entrance should be made sure. The Romans had to fight for every acre of ground, and in order to keep what they won they had to build castles and make camps. Hence Kent is full of Roman camps, which communicated with each other by magnificent roads, many of which are in use to this day. I don’t say that the Romans made every camp which is called Roman. The Britons whom they conquered were quite clever enough to see the advantage of strengthening high hills, and most of the Roman camps in Britain were British before. The Roman camp was usually square, and the British camp round; but on high hills with steep sides the Romans simply cut two or three trenches, one higher than the other, round the top of the hill; and in most cases, except where the camps are on low ground and therefore liable to be ploughed over and otherwise destroyed, the trenches remain in wonderful preservation, so that at a long distance you can tell a hill which has a camp on it.

The Roman roads, unlike the British track-ways, almost always ran straight ahead. If a mountain came in the way the Roman engineer, instead of going round it as a Briton would have done, went ewer it; and if you consider that the Romans drove their splendid roads in Britain through a country which was for the most part wild, pathless forest or marsh and bog, and that nothing turned them aside, you will realise what a wonderful people they were in their determination to conquer every obstacle, human or other.

Take a map—look at my little map, and see how straight our Kentish Roman roads run—at any rate, the three principal ones—that from Dover to London, the Watling Street; that from Lympne to Canterbury, the Stone Street; and that from Dover to Richborough. And we still use them !

I have nothing more to tell you about Kent under the Romans, except to mention the introduction of Christianity, because, after the first struggle of defence, the Kentish Britons became, like all other Britons, merged—that is, mixed—with the great mass of the conquered people, and, therefore, ceased to have a separate history.

Christianity, which came through Gaul, not through the Roman, was introduced, it is said, about A.D. 161 by a King Lucius. The first British Martyr was St. Alban under the reign of Diocletian. In 314 three British bishops went to the Council of Aries, but after the departure of the Romans the country sank into an indescribably miserable condition, Christianity seems to have entirely died out, and the only benefits which the inhabitants seem to have derived from the four hundred years’ rule of Rome were the great roads and the draining of Romney Marsh, for they even feared to live in the towns built by the Romans, believing that they were haunted by evil spirits, and places like Canterbury and Rochester remained for many years empty and silent.

CHAPTER III.

THE KINGDOM OF KENT.

You will read in Appendix A what I have to say about Kent as a county so specially connected with our kings and queens that of all counties in England I consider it to deserve best the name of the Royal County. This name is now given to Berkshire simply because Windsor Castle happens to be in Berkshire, but, apart from the reasons given in the Appendix, Kent was a Royal County once in the truest sense of the name, in*ismuch as it was a Kingdom.

I mentioned in the last chapter four “ kings “ of Kent who fought against the Romans, but, although we call them “ kings,” they were really only chieftains of districts or assemblies of families. In fact, they were like the chiefs of Scottish clans in after times, kings only in that they were independent and owed obedience to nobody.

But now the real history of Kent begins, and it is the more interesting because we are on tolerably firm ground, and can say, at any rate with fair certainty, and not hesitatingly as before, that this thing happened <and that that person did such and such things. Even about the Roman period there is a great deal which can only be guessed at, a great deal which we can only speak about as probable, and a great deal more about which we know nothing at all, so that whenever a Roman altar or a Roman inscription—writing, that is,—is dug up it is eagerly examined and read in the hope that it may teach us something new.

Well, the last Romansoldier left Britain in A.D. 413, and for some reasons it was a bad thing for the country. The Britons must have become much civilised, and were as happy and prosperous as people ever can be under foreign rulers. The strong arm of the Roman soldier kept them safe, and under Roman law people were able to go about their business with a freedom which they did not enjoy again for many centuries.

At the same time they lost their old manliness and bravery, for, although Britons served as soldiers in the Roman legions, it was the care of the Romans to keep the Britons down as much as possible, and not to give them a chance of freeing themselves by force of arms.

Consequently, directly the Romans left, the Britons were so weak and defenceless that they could do nothing to prevent the savage tribes of the Picts and Scots, who lived beyond the great wall of which I spoke before, and who had never been really conquered, from bursting over the country, consuming, destroying, and killing wherever they went, and the Britons heartily wished that the Romans were back again.

So they appealed to Aetius, a good and great Roman, who was then engaged in trying to keep the once mighty Roman Empire up ag.ainst the barbarians, who were attacking it on every side, in a s<ad address called “ The groans of the Britons;” but Aetius had quite enough to do at home, and he declined to give any assistance.

This was in the year 443, and Vortigern was King of Kent.

Then happened a great event. Three tribes of the people, called Cimbrians, occupied the north-west coast of what is now Germany, from the mouths of the Rhine to the Peninsula of Denmark. These were the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.

The >Saxons lived on the narrow neck of the Denmark Peninsula, and about the mouth of the Elbe, and with them was the tribe of Frisians. Their land is now Sehleswig Holstein. The Angles lived North of the Saxons; and beyond them, in what is now Jutland, were the Jutes.

The Britons, in despair at the refusal of Aetius to help them against the Picts and Scots, invited the Jutes to come over, promising them land and payment. And so in the year 445 Hengist and Horsa came over “ in three long ships “ and landed at Ebbsfleet, “ the harbour of Epwine,” in Pegwell Bay, half way between Ramsgate and iS^indwich.

They at once set to work and beat the Picts and Scots well at the battle of Stamford. But all this time Hengist was noting everything, and when he saw what a rich and pleasant country it was, and what poor creatures the Britons had become under Roman rule, the idea of settling for good seemed very pleasant, and not very difficult to carry out.

So he artfully persuaded the British prince Vortigern that more soldiers would be needed to keep the Picts and Scots back, and in 449 seventeen large ships with more Jutes arrived. Then, to keep up the appearance of friendship, he allowed his grand-daughter Rowena to marry Vortigern, and her father Œsc was made the first Earl of Kent.

Hengist kept up his deceitful game, and when in 452 more Jutish ships with soldiers arrived he thought it was time to throw off his mask and to begin his real work of conquering Kent for himself, making as his excuse for declaring war the delay of the Britons in paying the increased number of their allies. He inarched alon«* the Watling Street to Canterbury, which he destroyed, and proceeded towards London. But instead of keeping directly on his course he turned suddenly southward. Perhaps he was afraid of Rochester, which still had its sturdy Roman walls and was garrisoned by the Britons, or perhaps he was tempted to leave his course by the rich country of the Medway valley. Near Aylesford, in 455, he met the Britons under Vortigern, and there was a great battle in which the Britons were utterly beaten. Horsa,’ the brother of Hengist, met Catigern, the brother of Vortimer, son of Vortigern, in single combat, and both were killed. That strange old stone monument, called Kits Coty House, which stands in a field just below the main road from Rochester to Maidstone, near the Lower Bell Inn, is said to mark the grave of Catigern, whilst the village of Horsted, on the road to Chatham, is to be associated with the burial of Horsa.

After this victory Hengist declared himself King of Kent. He followed up the Britons and beat them again at Crayford, but is supposed to have been badly beaten by them in a battle fought somewhere between Hythe and Folkestone. Perhaps you have seen the collection of human skulls and bones at Hythe Church. Well, by some people they are said to be the skulls and bones of the Britons who were killed in this great battle, whilst another collection which used to be at Folkestone is supposed to be the remains of the Jutes who fell in the same fight. I am not of this opinion, but I like you to hear all our Kentish traditions about interesting things.

There is no history of this great battle, but from the fact that Hengist and his Jutes remained quietly shut up for some years after in the Isle of Thanet it would seem that they had met with some great check in the progress of their conquest; and if local tradition may sometimes be trusted as a help to history, I am inclined to think that the battle took place, not between Hythe and Folkestone,

c but at Stonar, near Sandwich. At any rate, after this quiet period the Jutes broke out of Thanet, beat the Britons at Ebbsfleet, took the Roman fortresses at Richborough and Reculver, and Hengist’s authority was firmly secured.

In the year 477 the Saxons, who had long been plundering the east coasts of England, having no doubt heard of Hengist’s success, resolved to see if they could not get a slice of the land and its wealth, which was to be had for a little fighting, and under a leader named Cymen landed at Selsea Bill, in Sussex, at a place now called Keynor—Cymen’s Ora or Shore. Old names die a hard death, for not only did Cymen give his name to Keynor, but his sons Wlencing and Cissa gave their names to Lancing and Cissbury, and perhaps Chichester, in Sussex.

Still the Jutes remained in Kent, for the nature of the surrounding country made it difficult for them to extend their possessions—the great forest of the Andredswald shutting them in on the west, <and the Marshes on the north.

In 564 Ethelbert—a famous name in our Kentish history—became King, and the country prospered. Canterbury, which had never been re-built since Hengist destroyed it a hundred years before, was settled iigain, and the old trade with the continent resumed. But the young King Ethelbert began to get anxious about the progress which his neighbours, the S<axons, were making. They had taken the old Roman fortress at Anderida, now Pevensey, and had marched, no doubt along the Roman road, by wtay of Lewes, the Brighton Downs, and Bramber, to Chichester, and thence along the magnificent Stone Street into Surrey, of course on their way to London. In 568 Ethelbert assembled his Kentish men and marched in a north-westerly direction to find the Saxons. He came up to them on Wimbledon Common, no doubt entrenched in what is still called Cæsar’s Camp, and a battle took place —the first historical battle between Englishmen and Englishmen, for although Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were different tribes they were of the same race. Ethelbert was beaten, and had to return to Kent, leiiving the county of Surrey in the hands of the Saxons.

In 597 an important event happened. This was the landing of Saint Augustine at Ebbsfleet—the same spot at which Hengist had arrived. I told you that under the Roman rule the Britons had become Christians, and that after the Romans had gone they went back to heathenism. Of course the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes had never been Christians.

Then Ethelbert married Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, who was a Christian. He brought her to the palace of the Kentish kings near Canterbury—close to where the beautiful gateway of St. Augustine’s Priory now stands, and there he was baptised by St. Augustine, and his example was followed by some, by no means all, of his countrymen.

By this time the Saxons who had beaten Ethelbert at Wimbledon had fallen out amongst themselves and were disunited. Remember, they were half savages, and as they had only come for plunder you can easily understand that sooner or later they would be pretty sure to quarrel about it. Ethelbert determined to take the opportunity offered him of extending his kingdom, and was so successful that the Kingdom of Kent extended as far as the Humber in the north, across the Midlands to Sherwood, by the western and southern borders of Northamptonshire to Huntingdon, and by West Hertfordshire to the Thames, Sussex, and the coast, calling himself Overlord of East Anglia, that is, of Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and Essex, as well as King of Kent.

So Kent became one of the three great divisions of England, the other two being Northumbria and Wessex.

At about this time, 600, St. Martin’s Church at

c 2 Canterbury was given to Queen Bertha’s chaplain. This is probably the oldest church in England, for it is built of Roman brick, and is said to date from A.D. 220. Augustine was hard at work converting Kent whilst its king was extending his kingdom. Ten thousand Kentishmen were baptised in the river Swale; the Cathedral of Christ Church at Canterbury was consecrated—not the splendid building we know so well and are so proud of, but an old Romano-British church, which lasted until the Danes burned it in 1011; outside the city on the east was founded the Benedictine Priory of SS. Peter and Paul—two saints who give their names to a great many of our Kentish churches—and which was afterwards the burial place of the Kings of Kent. With this spread of Christianity came a revival of the arts and sciences which civilise man, and for the first time in our history England became united to the older nations of Europe by ties stronger than the ordinary ones of trade—by the ties of the possession of the sams religion. Hear what Dean Stanley says about this : —

"From Canterbury, the first English Christian city; from Kent, the first English Christian kingdom, has, by degrees, arisen the whole constitution of Church and State in England which now binds together the whole British Empire.”

But Pope Gregory was not content that Kent alone should be Christian. He wanted to see the whole country converted. Roedwald, King of East Anglia under Ethelbert, became a Christian, but his people refused to follow his example, and there was a revolution against Ethelbert, which resulted in the loss of Middle England and East England, all but Essex and Middlesex, and by the date of King Ethelbert’s death in 616 even these were lost.

Ethelbert’s son, Eadbald, who succeeded him, was a heathen, and the people, who had never been really and thoroughly Christianised, became heathen again also, although later on Christianity was re-established.

Then follows a series of Kings of Kent who were not remarkable, and the kingdom gradually loses its importance, the only event worthy of mention being a battle at Otford in 774 between Aldric, King of Kent, and Offa, King of Mercia, or Middle and Western England, in which the Kentish King was beaten.

Egbert, King of Wessex—the south-west of England as far as Cornwall—was now the rising power. In 815 he conquered Cornwall, in 821 Mercia, in 823 his son Ethelwulf conquered Kent, and by the dethronement of Baldred the kingdom came to an end after an existence of three hundred and sixty-eight years.

So now the three peoples which through all these long years of bloodshed and misery had remained separate powers, namely, the Angles, who were divided into the East Angles, the Middle Angles, and the West Angles or Mercians; the Saxons, who were East Saxons, West Saxons, and South Saxons; the Jutes—who were in Kent —became one people, and when Egbert, King of Wessex, conquered Northumbria England became one nation; although Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia still elected their own kings, who paid tribute to Egbert. And thus matters rested until the Danish invasion.

I am not going to keep you very long with the Danes. Our county had its full share of the miseries which followed the landings of this fierce people; our Kentish towns were burned and sacked, our Kentish fields laid waste. In 893 Appledore was burned by the Danish chieftain Hasting, and it is said that Ashford grew out of the ruins of Great Chart, which was also burned. Alfred, however, beat them the same year near Aylesford. Twice was Canterbury plundered, and once was its Cathedral burned down. In 1016 there was a great fight at Otford, in which the Saxon King Edmund Ironside defeated the Danes, but I should tire you to no purpose if I were to tell you of nothing but these fightings and burnings and slayings, and after I had finished I don’t know that you would be much wiser than you were before.

It was under its Saxon Kings that Kent was divided into Laths—a division as peculiar to our county as Ridings are to Yorkshire, Parts and Trithings to Lincolnshire, and Rapes or Ropes to Sussex. Kent was divided into seven Laths, each Lath into Hundreds consisting of a hundred villages, or a hundred families, or a hundred hides of land (a hide being an uncertain quantity of land—generally believed to have been as much as was sufficient for one plough to till), and each Hundred into boroughs of ten freemen or heads of families. The n<ames still exist, and in some cases even the actual old boundaries.

Penenden Heath, near Maidstone, of which we shall speak more than once later on, was the great central meeting place of the County, and here were held three times a year the County Courts of Justice or Folk motes; whilst the Witenagemote, or grand National Council, was held at Easter and Christmas and met at no particular place.

CHAPTER IV.

THE NORMANS.

As you have read all about the famous battle of Hastings, by which the Normans conquered our land from the Saxons, I shall say little about it. But you may well be proud to know that our Kentish men had won for themselves such renown as warriors during the troublous times of the Saxon Kings that they claimed the right of always being placed in the very front of battle, and that they occupied and splendidly maintained this position at the battle of Hastings. Moreover, it is not generally told that the first Norman blood was drawn by Kent men, for part of William’s fleet landed at Romney and were repulsed by the men of that town.

Now, there are many books which tell you that after the Battle of Hastings the men of Kent and the Kentish men —the men of the Weald and the men of the rest of Kent— ivon or forced certain rights and privileges from William the Conqueror, and that in token of this the county bears beneath its crest of the White Horse of Hengist the proud motto Invicta; that is, Unconquered. Although I like to believe as much as any of you anything which glorifies our county of Kent, I should not be doing my duty to you if I asked you to believe what is not true. It is said, for instance, that those rights and privileges which Kent had ■7i

HISTORY OP KENT.

enjoyed under her own kings, and under the Saxon kings who followed them, were extorted from William by threats; that our Kentish men said, “ If you don’t let us keep these rights and privileges we will make you.” This is all nonsense. Kent was as completely conquered as any other part of England, and if William allowed its people to retain old rights and privileges it was because it wiis to his interest to treat the people he had conquered as quietly and as kindly as was advisable, and we may be quite sure that he did not let them retain any right or privilege which was likely to be a danger to him.

Besides, when William beat the army of Harold he beat the army at any rate of South England, and it is evident that there was not much strength left to oppose him or he could not have done as he did, march from Hastings to London without striking a blow. From Sussex he went into Kent, punished the men of Romney fur their above-mentioned act, summoned Dover Castle to yield and was obeyed, summoned Canterbury and was obeyed, and then went on to London. There was plenty of pluck amongst the people, but there was nobody to lead them.

Listen to what the greatest historian of this period of our national history, Mr. Freeman, says :—

"The Norman Conquest did little towards any abolition (doing away with) of the older English laws and institutions. But it set up some new institutions alongside of old ones.”

And again he says: "William did not abolish the old Kentish laws, but that is because he did not do so anywhere else; nor is there anything to show that he treated Kent better or worse than the rest of the kingdom.”

A condition of slavery existed in Kent as in other parts of England, and we find that until so late as 1685 each Kentish estate had its proportion of “ bondsmen, bondswomen, and villeins.”

The silliest of all the stories about Kent men being unusually favoured by William I tell you here, not because it is so silly, but because, as I have said before, I like you to know all our old Kent traditions. They say that Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, cand the Abbot of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, assembled the Kent men at Swanscombe, between Dartford and Northfleet, and, acting as captains, ordered each man to get a green bough, and for the whole body to march to where William was. It was a superstitious age, that is to say, an age when everybody, from highest to lowest, believed in ghosts and spirits and mysteries, and the story says that William, seeing what looked like a moving forest coming towards him, was frightened. When the Kent menapproached they threw aside their boughs, and, showing themselves fully armed, gave him the choice of allowing them to keep all their ancient rights and privileges or fighting. So he gave them what they wanted.

There are two points in this story which I would like you to note.

Firstly, the resemblance between this trick of the Kent men and the trick pkayed by Macduff upon Macbeth in Shakespeare’s wonderful play of Macbeth. And secondly, that two clergymen should act as soldiers.

Clergymen were constantly at the head of armies at this time and for a long while after. Indeed, if a bishop could not fight for his bishopric he stood a good chance of losing it, for, although people were ruled by laws,

’ The good old rule sufficed, the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can.”

You will hear people talk about the Kentish Law of Gavelkind as one of these rights won from William, but, although I will not worry you about the law of Gavelkind, which briefly means the division of property on the death of a father amongst all the children equ.ally—first the sons and then the daughters—instead of, as is usu.al, the greater part going to the eldest son, I may say that this law was by no means peculiar to Kent in William’s time, although it is now.

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who did so much towards the victory at Hastings, was made Earl of Kent by William, and Hugh de Montfort was made governor of Dover, and these two men behaved so brutally and tyrannically that in 1067 the Kent men assembled on Penenden Heath, near Maidstone, their ancient place of public meeting, to consider what should be done. And they did the worst thing they could, invited Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who only hated Englishmen less than he hated William, to come over and help them against the tyrants. Eustace, who was one of the four knights who so cowardly killed Harold at Hastings after the arrow had struck him, came over, and with the Kent men attacked the great castle which Odo had built at Rochester on the site of a Roman and Saxon fortress, and they were utterly beaten, so that this did not make matters smoother for the Kent men with William.

However, to show that William, if severe against those who opposed him, seems to have been just with those who let him have his way, in 1072 he ordered the Kent men to meet on Penenden Heath to judge in a dispute between Odo of Bayeux and Archbishop Lanfranc about some thefts of the latter’s land made by the former, not as bishop, but as Earl of Kent, and when the Kent men decided that Odo was in the wrong, confirmed their decision, and allowed it to be passed as law by the great Council of the Kingdom.

It may be interesting for you to know that the population of Kent at this time, according to the Domesday Book, was twelve thousand two hundred—about the population of the town of Ashford at this day.

Wherever the Normans intended to settle they strengthened themselves by the building of castles. As a rule they made use of places where already Saxon, and even Roman fortresses, had stood—Dover Castle, for instance, was on a Saxon site, and the Saxons had built on a Roman site. Rochester was the same. Allington, Canterbury, Chilham, and Folkestone were built on Saxon sites. Eynesford and Tong were probably pure Norman.

The church people too were active builders, and to the Norman period we may date Canterbury Priory, Lesnes Priory, and those at Boxley, Dover, Rochester, and Faversham.

When you see ruins of buildings of this kind you become doubly interested when you know exactly at what part you are looking, and this is difficult to make out unless you know something about the arrangement of Norman abbeys and castles. So to help you I have drawn two plans, one of an abbey and one of a castle, and as the Normans rarely departed from a regular plan these may be useful.

So much interest surrounds many of our little Kentish places which are associated with big events—Otford, for instance, where already four battles have been fought— that you may like to know that the little town of Wye, near Ashford, with its lordship over twenty-two "Hundreds,” and privileges extending over Folkestone, Milton, and Chart, was given to Battle Abbey as an "endowment “—that is, as a means of putting money into the Abbey chest—by William the Conqueror before any other place.

There is nothing special to keep us during the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I., but Kent under the unhappy reign of Stephen comes to the fore. The chief— nay, the only event of this time was the war which Stephen and his spirited wife M.atilda carried on against Maud, the cousin of Stephen. It was about the crown of England. Stephen’s father was the husband of William the Conqueror’s daughter Adela. Maud was the great grand-daughter in a direct line of William, and was regarded as the natural heiress to the throne. But Stephen, who w,as a bad man, procured false evidence that Henry I., the last king, had said that for some bad behaviour or other his daughter Maud should not be Queen of England, and so he was allowed to become King, got hold of the late king’s treasure at Winchester, and was crowned with Matilda in 1136, the great barons backing him up.

But Maud was not going to be quietly cheated of her rights like this. The people of England were not on her side, but she tried to take Normandy, which, as you of course know, was then a part of the dominion of our kings. She failed to do this. Stephen’s brother and all the church people—very rich and powerful they were too—were on Maud’s side, and war was declared against Stephen. Dover and Leeds Castles were taken from him. He won them back, but he was afterwards taken prisoner at Lincoln, and Maud was declared queen.

London and Kent alone stood up in this extremity for Stephen, whose queen, Matilda, and son, Eustace, went into Kent. Meanwhile Maud’s insolent behaviour disgusted her o friends, and Stephen’s side got stronger. Maud escaped to Oxford, then to Winchester, the men of London and Kent after her, and very nearly caught her. Her men were beaten in a fight; she fled back to Oxford, where she was besieged by the Londoners and Kent men, and only escaped by dressing herself in white and getting off in the snow.

So the Kent men helped Stephen to the throne. I don’t know that there is much to be proud of in the act, for England would probably have been much happier without him. He founded Faversham Abbey, and was buried there, as were his wife and his son, although their bones were afterwards taken out and thrown into Faversham

PLAN OF A NORMAN CASTLE.

{empty}A. THE BARBACAN. THE OUTER WATCH TOWER.

{empty}B. THE MOAT OR DITCH CROSSED ONLY BY

{empty}C. THE DRAW-BRIDGE : SO CALLED BECAUSE IT COULD BE DRAWN UP OR DOWN.

{empty}D. WALL OF THE OUTER BALLIUM. {empty}E. THE OUTER^BALLIUM OR SPACE INSIDE THE OUTER WALL I HERE WERE THE BARRACKS, LODGINGS OF WORKMEN, SOMETIMES A CHURCH, THE {empty}F. WALL OF INNER BALLIUM. {empty}G. THE INNER BALLIUM! NOT ALWAYS IN CASTLES, BUT WHEN EXISTING USED AS E {empty}H. WALL OF KEEP. {empty}I. ARTIFICIAL EARTH MOUND. {empty}J. THE KEEP : THE HEART OF THE CASTLE I ALWAYS VERY STRONGLY BUILT.

Creek, to be gathered together again, it is said, and placed under a fine canopied tomb in the Abbey Church. Stephen was very fond of Faversham and spent much time there, so we may believe that even then it no longer deserved its name—the unhealthy, feverous town.

CHAPTER V.

THE PLANTAGENETS.

Henry IL—1154-1189.

Although the county of Kent plays no more prominent part in the history of our country under the first Plantagenet King, Henry the Second—grandson of Henry the First—than any other, it is at any rate the most intimately connected with the life of the most famous Englishman of the day, Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the stories and legends about him in Kent are innumerable. The Kent men throughout stood up for the Archbishop in his long quarrel with the king as to whether the order of clergymen was to enjoy its ancient privileges or not, for the people of England as a rule very much preferred the rule of the Church—that is to say, of the great abbots and priors, whose magnificent abbeys and priories did for this people almost all that schools and hospitals do for them nowadays, to the stern, wicked, cruel dominion of the great nobles who were backed up by the king.

"The men of Kent,” says Mrs. Green in her little book about this reign, “held the outposts of the county as the advanced guard formally charged with the defence of its shores from foreign invasion, which was a very present terror in those days And it seems as if the shire very early took up the part it was to play again and again in mediæval history, and even later, as the assertor and defender of popular privileges.”

Thomas a Becket was personally beloved by the Kent men. When business took him from place to place he travelled magnificently and slowly,—magnificently, as became the first subject in the kingdom; slowly, because it was impossible to travel quickly on the Kentish roads of Henry the Second’s time.

He had splendid palaces at Canterbury, Maidstone, Charing, Otford, and Knole, and smaller resting houses at Ford, Chart, Chartham, Teynham, Wingham, and Wrotham. At Otford people still show you St. Thomas’s Well, w*hich he is said to have caused to bubble up, and the ivy-covered ruins of his palace. They also s<ay that no nightingales ever sing at Otford because they disturbed the great Archbishop at his prayers.

I have, I think, already mentioned that the clergy of these days were, in defence of their own rights or to gratify their ambition, as often soldiers as not. I have read that Thomas a Becket, when Archdeacon of Canterbury, served in the army which King Henry collected for the purpose of conquering the earldom of Toulouse, and that he kept up at his own cost seven hundred horsemen and one thousand foot.

The real beginning of his long quarrel with the king was also a military affair, Becket claiming the castles of Rochester, Siiltwood, Hythe, and Tonbridge as having always belonged to the See of Canterbury.

Finally, <as you know, he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, but perhaps you do not know that the four knights who murdered him arranged their plans at the Castle of Saltwood, to which many of you must have gone from Folkestone, and that they galloped thence on their wicked errand along the old Roman Stone Street about which I told you defore.

After his death his shrine—that is, the altar standing over his tomb and containing his relics—became the object of pilgrimages for the highest and noblest, as well as the middle class and the poor, from all parts of England find even the continent, the presents and offerings made being of the richest description. Pilgrims from London and the continent came along Watling Street, but pilgrims from the south-west of England came along a quiet, secluded road which is still called “ The Pilgrims’ Way,” or “The Old Pilgrim,” and which is still traced by the dotted clumps of yew trees from where it enters Kent at Tatsfield, iibove Westerham, to Charing and Eastwell Park. I daresay it can be followed further on the way to Canterbury than this, but, although I have tried four or five times to do so, I have failed.

In Appendix A, as I have said before, I try to show you how Royal a county ours is, but everybody doesn’t know that in a tower of Westenhanger House—that picturesque pile of old buildings which you see on your right hand sitting with your face to the engine on the way from London to Dover just before you come to Westenhanger station—Henry the Second used to meet and court fair Rosamond before he removed her to Woodstock.

RichardI.—1189-1199.

In 11S9 Richard held a great council of the kingdom at Canterbury, at which William, King of Scotland, attended to pay homage. After this Richard started from Dover for the Crusades. On his return to Engkand after his imprisonment in Germany—you know the story about the minstrel Blondel—he walked from Sandwich to Canterbury in humble dress by way of thanksgiving for his escape.

John—1199-1215.

This bad king had one or two important dealings with our county.

John had himself crowned a second time at Canterbury in 1201 just to spite the Archbishop, who had kept Christmas there in a style more suited to a king than a clergyman, by putting him to great expense. In 1203 John kept Christmas in great state at Canterbury. He was very fond, too, of Chilham Castle.

In 1213 the Cinque Ports fleet captured a French fleet and burned a hundred ships—but there is more about our Kentish navy under the next reign.

On Barham Downs (or at Temple, near Ewell), a place famous for the assembling of armies, John met Pandulph, the Pope’s legate—which means messenger—who had come to tell the king that he was no longer to reign over England as he persisted in refusing to have the man whom the Pope wished to be Archbishop of Canterbury, the great Stephen Langton, and defied him. At this time you know England, being a Roman Catholic country, was almost as much under the rule of the Pope of Rome as of her ow*n kings, who until the middle of Henry the Eighth’s reign dared not disobey him, so that John in defying the Pope was guilty of what was then considered a terrible crime.

John thought Stephen Langton was a dangerous man— that is, a man who would stand up for the peojjle against him, and so he refused to allow him to be Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope was very angry and excommunicated him—deprived him of all the rights as a churchman, and ordered him to give up his crown. John refused to do so. So the Pope published a crusade against him—told the people of Europe that it was a great and holy duty to make war on him, and selected Philip, King of France, as the man to do it.

Philip gathered an army to invade England, and John gathered an army of 60,000 men to meet him, again on Barham Downs.

Then suddenly, John, frightened at the terrible thing he had done in refusing to obey the greatest m-in in Christendom, and, as he was a bad king, not at all sure

i> that his own people would stand by him in a fight with the King of France, submitted, and at the house of the Knights Templars, near Dover, resigned his crown into the Pope’s legate’s hands, and received it back as a vassal—that is, as a man who pays duty to a superior.

The people of England, however, were very angry at this cowardly act of the king’s, and the result of their anger was Magna Charta, 1215.

Kent was faithful to John throughout the war between him and the barons. The barons invited Louis, the eldest son of the King of France, to be King of England, and he set sail with seven hundred ships in 1216. Stormy weather and the Cinque Ports fleet, however, stopped him for a while, but he afterwards landed at Stonar, took Canterbury and Rochester—which had already stood a famous siege against John—and then the Kent men, except Dover and the Cinque Ports, turned against the king and declared for Louis. Louis went on to London, and acted for some time as King of England.

John’s death put an end to the miseries of civil war, but things were beginning to look better for him.

Henry III.—1215-1272.

Louis resumed his attempts to increase his power in England and went to France for more soldiers, but public opinion was in favour of the young king, and the Cinque Ports fleet was sent to oppose the landing of Louis. He however, landed at Sandwich, burned the town, but was defeated at Lincoln, and asked his father for more help.

In this reign may be considered to have begun the growth of our glorious empire of the sea, for in 1217 the Cinque Ports fleet under Hubert de Burgh met the French fleet coming with the reinforcements which Louis had asked of his father, and, although the French had eighty ships and the English foi’ty, only fifteen French ships escaped.

As it may interest you to hear what a sea fight of seven hundred years ago was like, I give you a description by the famous old chronicler Froissart :-tt

"The bowmen and archers began the engagement with a volley of arrows; as soon as their ships came in contact they were fastened together with chains and hooks; powder of quick lime was scattered in the air that it might be carried by the wind into the eyes of the enemy, and the English, leaping on board with axes in their hands, rendered the ships unmanageable by cutting away the rigging.”

Now, the early glories of the English navy were won by Cinque Ports ships—ships belonging to the five ports of Dover, Sandwich, Hythe, Romney, and Hastings —for the most part Kentish ships, manned by Kentish men, and paid for in Kentish-earned money. I want to impress upon you that this Cinque Ports navy was the Royal Navy of England and the only bulwark against foreign invasion for hundreds of years, so that if a Kent man had nothing else to be proud of he might always and for ever boast of this great honour for our county.

Now, please turn to Appendix B and read what I say there about the Cinque Ports.

After the beating above referred to the French made peace, and Louis left England.

Henry married Eleanor of Provence at Canterbury, and in 1220 the magnificent shrine in the cathedral received the bones of Thomas a Becket.

One of the Acts of the Parliament of Oxford held in 1258 was that the Castle of Dover and fourteen others and the Cinque Ports should be commanded by natives of England —important as showing that the people were beginning to show a national feeling, and were soon to declare themselves English and nothing else. Another Act was that the king should faithfully observe Magna Charta, but the king broke his word, and the barons declared war against him.

Simon de Montfort is the principal figure of this reign, and, although not an Englishman by birth, is worthy of all

d 2 honour as the chief champion of the liberties of the people against the tyranny of the crown.

Before the war actually broke out the dispute between the king and the barons was referred to the King of France, who was to settle who was right. His decision was that the barons wanted too much, and he particularly condemned their demand about the command of the Kentish castles. The barons did not choose to obey his decision, so war was declared, Kent and the Cinque Ports being for the barons.

Rochester again sustained a famous siege by the barons, but Henry relieved the city, took Tonbridge Castle, and marched towards the coast in the hope that the Cinque Ports would be terrified into joining him. On his way he executed three hundred men at Flimwell because a countryman h.ad killed his cook !

The Cinque Ports declined to help him, so he went on burning, destroying, and skaying through the Weald of Kent.

In 1264 the barons’ army met the king’s at Lewes, utterly defeated it, and took the king prisoner. His sons, the Princes Henry and Edward, were sent to Dover, and De Montfort himself took charge of the king, and indeed held an almost royal court at Canterbury.

This great victory is doubly important, for not only was it a triumph of liberty against oppression, but it led to the calling together of our first English parliament, of the first assembly wherein merchant and trader sat side by side with knight and baron. This was in 1264.

But Queen Eleanor stirred up war again on behalf of the king. The Pope excommunicated the barons and placed the Cinque Ports under an interdict, which means that he exhorted all people to regard them as unworthy of belonging to the Church, and to do them all the harm they could. De Montfort assembled an army on Barham Downs "Such a multitude of horsemen and footmen were assembled as a man would not have thought possible to have been found in the whole realm.” But nothing came of it all. In 1265 De Montfort and the barons at Evesham were beaten by Prince Edward, who had escaped from Dover, and De Montfort was killed. The people, however, long reverenced his memory as their champion, and healing miracles were performed by a “ measure,” or a belt, which had been round his body.

This Prince Edward, afterwards to be King Edward I., received the submission of the barons of the Cinque Ports at their ancient place of meeting, Shepway, near Lympne, and punished some of their mariners, who, rather than do nothing, had been lately committing piratical outrages on the seas.

Edward I.—1272-1307.

In 1287 occurred the great storm which so altered the course of the river Rother that it no longer flowed into the sea at New Romney, but at Rye in Sussex, destroyed the towns of Old Winchelsea, Broomhill, Oswardstone, and Dengemarsh by washing away the bank of shingle on which they stood and which stretched across what is now called Rye Harbour.

In 1293 the English fleet—no doubt the Cinque Ports fleet, for the gallant west country had not yet become a nursery for sea heroes—numbering a hundred vessels, met and defeated a French fleet of twice the size. In 1294 fifty Kentish gentlemen accompanied the king to the siege of Caerlaverock, in Scotland, (Caerlaverock is believed to be the original of the Castle of Ellangowan, about which you read in Sir Walter Scott’s “ Guy Mannering.”)

In 1295 Philip, King of France, sent a fleet of three hundred ships up the Channel with the object of landing troops and destroying towns. One ship, acting as a scout, got to Hythe. The Kent men pretended to run away, the Frenchmen landed, then the Kent men suddenly turned, {empty}.slew two hundred and fifty of the Frenchmen and burned their ship, for which the French admiral landed at Dover and plundered the town and priory, but the sturdy countrymen came back in the evening and drove the French back to their ships with the loss of eight hundred men.

In 1299 the king made a journey through Kent, and from the dates of his arrival at the different places it seems that our Kentish roads had been somewhat improved. He went from Canterbury to Dover in one day, and from Dover to Wye in one, and thence to Charing, Smarden, Cranbrook, Sissinghurst, Mayfield, Wateringbury, Leeds, and arrived at Canterbury on the twenty-fourth day. Seventeen “ guides “ were employed on this journey. In 1302 he made another Kentish journey, and gave, we are told, three pounds, modern value, a day in charity.

In 1305 the Prince of Wales was banished from the court by his father for some irregularity in which he and his friend Piers Gaveston were concerned, and he spent his time in Kent and Sussex—Wye and Tenterden being visited.

Edward IL—1307-1327.

The chief Kentish event of this reign was the rebellion— for it was nothing else—of Lord Badlesmere against the king, together with the Earl of Lancaster and the barons. He had been steward of the royal household, and so was a man of great influence, and had obtained the royal castle at Leeds in exchange for other lands. At any rate, the king wanted to get Leeds back, and sent his queen, Isabella, daughter of Philip le Bel, of France, to ask lodging there with a large train of attendants, pretending that she was going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Lord Badlesmere was Eiway from Leeds at the time, but the ladies of this age showed themselves equal to take the places of their lords in times of trouble, and Lady Badlesmere, suspecting that Queen Isabella’s visit h.ad another meaning, refused to admit her, fired on her men and killed some of them.

So King Edward marched to Leeds, and Lady Badlesmere, after showing fight for a while, surrendered. The king took severe vengeance on the garrison. Colepeper, whom Lord Badlesmere had entrusted with the care of his wife, children, and castle, was hung, Lady Badlesmere was sent to the Tower of London, and the king seized the castle, together with those at Chilham and Tonbridge, which were also Lord Badlesmere’s.

Meanwhile Lord Badlesmere and the other barons were in alliance with the Scots against the king, who marched against them at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, defeated them, executed all the leaders, and crushed the rebellion.

Edward III.—1327-1377.

This is a particularly interesting reign to us. Edward the Black Prince married Joane, sister of John Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, known as the Fair Maid of Kent, and their son became Richard the Second. After the great victory at Poictiers, 1356, Edw-ird landed at Sandwich—which was then at the height of its importance as a place of business and a port—with his prisoner, King John of France, and thence, after the famous entry into London, at which the prisoner rode on a splendid horse, whilst his conqueror rode beside him on a smaller and commoner—he brought John to the royal palace at Eltham, and in that hall which from a distance looks like a barn, but which is so beautiful w*ithin, he feasted him and waited on him. From this circumstance it is called King John’s palace to this day, although our King John had no more to do with it than you or I.

Now, does not the knowledge of that single incident make that old building ten times more interesting to you than it was before 1 And I shall tell you in their proper places of other things connected with Eltham Palace which will make you feel as I do, that it is one of the most interesting places in England.

The Black Prince died at the Archbishop’s Palace at Canterbury, after having tried the effects of the waters of that well at Harbledown which is still called “ The Black Prince’s Well,” and was buried, as you know, in the cathedral, his tomb being the chief object of interest to visitors from all parts of the world.

In 1348 the terrible Black Death, a plague which is said by some to have originated in China, ravaged England, and especially the southern and eastern parts. It does not seem to have been so bad in Kent as in the eastern counties, p<articularly Norfolk, but it must have been very violent, for w*e read of whole districts going out of cultivation, and of grass growing in the streets of many of our towns; and during the years 1348 and 1349 three Archbishops of Canterbury were elected, two of whom died of the plague. Remember, that in those days there were no hospitals worthy of the name—at any rate in the country districts, and that the art of healing was very rough and ready, so that when a disease like this plague once got a hold upon a country it had to run its course.

One serious result of the plague was that the land was over-run by men who had been ruined and men out of work, as well as by all sorts of rogues and vagabonds. Parliament, intending to remedy this state of things, passed a law in 1349 called the Statute of Labourers, by which every man or woman of whatever condition, free or bond, able in body and not more than sixty years old, and not having a livelihood or land to cultivate, should be obliged to serve any employer who should require them, and should take the wages customary in the neighbourhood. John Ball, a wandering preacher of Kent, who would in these days be called a Socialist, spoke violently against this enslaving of the people by Act of Parliament, taking as his text :

“When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman ?”

meaning that God had made us all equal, and that kings and rulers had no right to go against what God had done by making the poor slaves to the rich.

The feeling he excited amongst his country listeners had a good de<al to do in bringing about the rebellion of Wat Tyler in the next reign.

It was under Edward the Third that Kent became famous as an industrial centre, and it is strange to note the changes brought about when we think that the north of England, which in Edward the Third’s reign was little batter than a wilderness, should now, thanks to the development of its coal fields, be the manufacturing part of our country, whilst the south nowadays has comparatively no manufactures at all.

By this reign the great forest, about which I told you in the first chapter as covering the greater part of West Kent called the Weald, had been pretty well cleared, and amongst these “ dens “ or hollows the clothmaking industry was introduced in 1337 by Flemings, that is, Dutchmen, seventy families of whom were invited to settle by Edward. Cranbrook was chosen as the centre of the trade on account of its excellent fuller’s earth—used in the manufacture of woollens—but Goudhurst, Hawkhurst, and Biddenden were busy places, and I have read that Queen Elizabeth once walked from Cranbrook to Coursehorne Manor, a distance of one mile, entirely upon broad cloth woven at Cranbrook.

In 1353 the Staple—the place where wool had to be brought for payment of customs before it could be exported or sold- -was changed from the towns of Flanders to certain of England, and amongst them Canterbury, and so trade was established which flourished down to the end of the eighteenth century.

In 1340 the English won a great naval victory off Sluys, Two hundred and forty English ships beat four hundred French with forty thousand men on board. Two hundred and thirty French ships were taken, and it is said thirty thousand Frenchmen were killed.

And in 1350 there was a battle off Winchelsea, in which both the king and the Black Prince took part, and which ended in a great defeat of the Spani.ards.

I would like you to note that the difference between Normans and S<axons which was so strongly marked at the beginning of John’s reign, 1200, had entirely disappeared by the beginning of the reign of Edward the Third—that is, in a hundred and thirty years, and that we became simply Englishmen.

Also, that this was the reign of Geoffrey Chaucer, who, although a Londoner by birth, was a knight of the shire for Kent, probably lived in Kent; at any rate, knew Kent, and is rendered immortal by his story of a Kentish Pilgrimage.

Richard IL—1377-1399.

Our county is brought prominently into historical notice during this reign by the rebellion of Wat Tyler. I cannot give you a good reason, but Kent always seems to have come to the fore in matters pertaining to the liberties of the people, so that more popular rebellions and agitations have begun in Kent than in any other county. At any rate, to this day strangers to Kent always remark that nowhere else, except in Northumberland and Cumberland, are they so impressed by the general independence of manner and speech, a peculiarity which they call, rightly or wrongly it is not for me, a Kentishman, to decide, insolence. And yet, as you know very well, Kent is the only solid Conservative county in England.

The immediate cause of Wat Tyler’s rebellion was the miserable failure of the war with France after the death of the Black Prince, which led to the levying of a Poll Tax— that is, a tax upon every “ head “ of the people, no distinction being made between the rich and poor, so that the ploughman paid just as much as the nobleman. But the feeling that the people were not fairly dealt with by the richer classes and the government had, as I said in the last chapter, been long smouldering. Now it burst forth into a blaze.

Really the explosion first occurred in Essex, where one of the collectors of the Poll Tax got roughly handled for misbehaving himself, but the scene of real business was in Kent.

Ball, the preacher of whom I told you, was imprisoned at Canterbury. The Kent men released him, and plundered the Archbishop’s palace—one of those stupid, wanton acts by which mobs have so often made enemies of people who sympathise with them and would help them. One hundred thousand men gathered round Wat Tyler on Blackheath, intending to march on to London. Whilst they were encamped there the Princess of Wales, mother of the young king, happened to be returning from a pilgrimage to Canterbury, but the mob did not interfere with her, although it is said one man asked her to give him a kiss, and she went on.

Wat Tyler and his men marched on London, and the example set by Kent wtas followed by Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Surrey, and Sussex, in all of which counties the people rose to arms. The Kent men crossed the Thames, burned the houses of rich people, but committed few robberies—indeed, one man caught stealing was hung on the spot—and went on to the Tower of London. From this fortress they dragged out Archbishop Sudbury and others who were known to be concerned in the levying of the hateful tax and beheaded them.

King Richard, a boy of sixteen, met a number of the rebels at Mile End, and asked them what they wanted. They replied, “ A general pardon, the abolition of slavery,” for, in spite of Magna Charta, the condition of the lower classes was little better than slavery—” That the rent of good land should be fourpence an acre, and that all men should have liberty to buy and sell at fairs and markets.” All this the king granted. Then he went on into the city to Smithfield, where he met that portion of the rebels who had been at the Tower. Wat Tyler dame forward, having given oi’ders that at a sign from him they should kill all the king’s people, but not the king himself. As he behaved in a very insolent manner in the presence of the king Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, knocked him down, and the attendants killed him. This made the rebels furious, and they drew their bows to avenge the death of their leader, when the boy king, with wonderful pluck and presence of mind, stepped forward and said :—

"Good people, you want a leader; I will be your leader ! “

And this won the hearts of the Kent men. They dropped their bows, followed the king into the fields, and were allowed to go with the s*ime promises which had been made to the Mile End men.

But as soon as the nobility and gentry saw that the mob was dispersed, and not at all liking the promises which had been made by the king, they took arms, hunted the rebels down, killed many of them, the promises were set aside as worth nothing, and the people were no better off than they had been before.

House of Lancaster. Henry IV—1399-1413.

In the year 1406 the Cinque Ports navy, under Henry Page, surprised and took one hundred and twenty French merchant ships “ laden with salt, iron, oyle, and no worse merchandise.”

It was in this reign that the Prince of Wales,afterwards Henry the Fifth, played the trick of pretending to rob Falstaff on Gads Hill, outside Rochester, about which some day you will read with great delight in Shakespeare’s famous play of “ Henry the Fourth.”

Henry V—1413-1422.

In your Shakespeare you will read that it was from Hampton that King Henry sailed with the gallant army which was to win the glorious victory of Agincourt, but all the older copies say that it was from Dover. At any rate, it was at Dover that he landed after the victory, and, I quote from Dr. Lingard’s History, “ The crowd plunged into the waves to meet him, and the conqueror was carried in their arms from his vessel to the beach.” At Blackheath he was met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London with four hundred citizens “ clothed in scarlet.”

At the battle of Agincourt Sir Thomas Erpingham led three hundred Kentish bowmen of his own training, and right well the3T acquitted themselves against the French. Their banner had on it a wood (Swanscombe Wood) with an arm holding a sword above the word “ Invicta.”

Henry VI.—1422-1461.

Kent, the great manufacturing district of England, suffered very much from the ill success of the French war— (the fifth period of the Hundred Years War, between 1429 and 1453). Joan of Arc had defeated the English before Orleans, and we had been beaten at the battle of Fourmigny. This brought about the “ Complaint of the Commons of Kent,” a loud and fierce call for reform, which complained that the king made improper use of the money collected from the people, that the tax collectors were insolent and dishonest, and that the people were vexed by being compelled to travel from the farthest parts of West Kent to East Kent to attend the sessions of justice. The Statute of Labourers was condemned also, and it was accompanied in 1450 by a gathering of armed Kent men under Jack Cade, said by some to be an Ashford man and by others an Irishman. Dick the Butcher, of Ashford, in Shakespeare’s play of “ King Henry the Sixth,” makes fun of Cade’s name, which means the old Kentish fish measure, a cask, from the Latin word cadus, smaller than a barrel, and holding six hundred herrings.

Cade marched to Sevenoaks, where he met and beat the Royal forces sent against him, and encamped on Blackheath preparatory to marching to London. The “ complaint” was well received by the parliament, and a pardon granted to Cade and his men, whereupon they broke up and went home. But the government did exactly as they did with Wat Tyler’s men, refused to grant what they had promised, and offered a reward for Cade’s head. He ran away, and was killed by Alexander Iden, a Kentish esquire, some people say at Heathfield in Sussex, where you may see a monument raised on the spot on which is written “ Near this spot was slain the notorious rebel Jack Cade by Alexander Iden, Esquire, Sheriff of Kent, {empty}A.D. 1450. His body was carried to London and his head fixed on London Bridge. This is the success of all rebels, and this fortune chanceth ever to traitors.” But some of us Kent men with a good deal of reason believe that the place is Hothfield, near Ashford. Firstly, because Cade would naturally fly to his friends in Ashford; and secondly, because Iden’s home was at Ripley Court, near Westwell.

Jack Cade’s men have been called the “ scum of Kent,” but we find that so far from this being the case there were amongst them one knight, eighteen esquires, seventy-four gentlemen, and five clergymen.

One quarter of his body was sent to Blackheath, one to Norwich, one to Salisbury, and one to Gloucester.

Then the king went into Kent, executed twenty-six of the leaders, and on his return the men of Kent met him at Blackheath, naked save their shirts, and begged his pardon on their knees.

You know that the name of Lollards was given to the followers of the great Reformer Wycliffe,—a name derived, it is said, from their practise of singing dirges at funerals, the German word for singing slowly being lollen, and that these people were cruelly persecuted at this time. The first Lollard martyr was a Kent man named White, who was burned at Norwich in 1428, and the Archbishops of Canterbury were the chief persecutors of men who dared to believe what Wycliffe taught—the right of private opinion in religious matters, and the teaching of the Bible to the people in their own language. Sir John Oldcastle, called “ the good Lord Cobham,” was a champion of the Lollards, assembled them at Cobham for worship, and was therefore burnt in 1417.

We now come to a period of English history more difficult to understand than any other—even more than very much older periods—the times of the Wars of the Roses, during which the whole country from end to end was so torn and disturbed and upset by the terrible fighting that the ordinary life of men was almost paralysed, lands remained uncultivated, business and trade were at a standstill, nobody wrote records, most of the oldest English families disappeared, never to rise again; and in short, the whole nation was dislocated and convulsed. It is such a melancholy repetition of the story of misery and bloodshed that, although I must tell you all that concerns the county of Kent during this strife, I shall be very brief.

After the defeat of the Yorkists—the White Rose people—at the battle of Bloreheath in 1459, the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury fled to France. Next year they landed in Kent, and the people took up arms for them because they felt that King Henry the Sixth, who was by name king only, was utterly unfit to rule the country, and a Kentish army entered London, obtained more men, and took up a position to prevent the Red Rose people, or Lancastrians, who had beaten the Yorkists at Wakefield from coming to London. But they were beaten by the Lancastrians under Queen Margaret at St. Albans, 1461, and if the Lancastrians had at once marched on instead of wasting time in executing prisoners they could have got to London. As it was, the Earl of Warwick’s army of Kent men and Londoners were able to bar the road, and as young Edward, Duke of York, afterwards Edward IV., came up on the other side of her, fresh from his victory at Mortimer’s Cross over Jasper Tudor, she was obliged to turn back northwards.

The Yorkist army of Kent men and Londoners followed her, and beat her at Towton, the result of which was that Edward became King Edward the Fourth of England. We know that Kent men took part in this great victory (which has been called the “ Pharsalia of England,” because the result of it was like the result of the great battle fought {empty}B.C. 48 between Julius Cæsar and his rival Pompey, by which Cæsar became absolute master of the Roman world), for masses were ordered to be said for the souls of Kent men killed in the battle in Ashford church by the will of Sir John Fogge, and we read that Robert Home, one of the Homes of Appledore, was killed. Moreover, the poet Drayton records how bravely Lord Cobham’s Kentish bowmen fought against the Lancastrians.

House of York. Edward IV—1461-1485.

"In 1470,” the old chronicle writer Holinshed says, “ The Kent men, whose minds be ever movable at the change of princes, go to London, rob, kill, and release prisoners from the King’s Bench, and would have gone further had not Warwick crushed them.”

This is one of those unaccountable changes of feeling which seem to have been so common in those days of general confusion, for you see Warwick had to “ crush “ the very men who had greeted him when he landed in Kent, and who followed him to London and Yorkshire. The fact was that the Earl of Warwick, the “ king maker “ as he was called, who had, as we have seen, been an enemy of Margaret, suddenly turned to her side and promised to put her husband, Henry the Sixth, on the throne again.

In 1471 a pretender named Falconbridge landed in Kent. The Kent men sided with him and took Sandwich Castle. Edward the Fourth came into Kent, re-took Sandwich Castle, although it was bravely defended, and captured thirteen ships, and Kent became the scene of merciless executions, especially at Canterbury (where the Mayor was beheaded), Rochester, and Blackheath.

Romney Marsh is even now unknown to a great number of Kentish people, so that in the days of Edward IV. it must have been still more remote. I have told you that the Romans probably first turned the muddy morass into pasture land by building walls and draining, but it would seem to have become neglected and deserted by Edward IV.’s reign, so to induce people to settle there he offered great privileges.

Before the reign of Henry the Third, that is, before 1215, the Marsh people had elected their own governors and levied their own taxes, and to these Edward added other benefits, and confirmed all the ancient rights.

So Romney Marsh is to-day ruled exactly as it was ruled perhaps seven hundreds years ago—by a bailiff, “jurats,’1 and twenty-three owners of lands or manors near the Marsh called “ lords,” the only difference being that whereas there were twenty-four “jurats” in old days there are but five now. The Grand Lath, or “ meeting,” is still held at Dymchurch on the Thursday in Whitsun week, and four petty Laths are held quarterly. At these meetings— in a quaint old house called “ New Hall “—all the business of the Marsh, of its drainage, of Dymchurch sea wall, and the raising of money by “ scots,” or rates, is done.

I am particular in telling you things like this, because this is an age of change, and, although I do not think for a moment that the government of Romney Marsh will be altered, I want to impress upon you the importance of becoming familiar with all matters of old fashion because they are so rapidly disappearing.

Richard III.—1483-1485.

During this reign Henry of Richmond, afterwards King Henry the Seventh, thought that the men of Kent were

E the fittest to help him in his plan of t4aking the kingdom from the wicked usurper Richard, and they assembled at Maidstone under Richard Guildsord, but the time was not ripe for such a movement and nothing came of it.

You know that Richard was killed at the battle of Bosworth. Well, in the year 1720 there was accidentally discovered in the Register of Deaths of Eastwell church the following :—

"Richard Plantagenet was buryed the 22nd daye of December, 1550,” followed by a peculiar mark which is only put in registers after the names of royal or noble people. This old man, for he was about eighty, is said to have been a son of King Richard, and had fled to Eastwell upon hearing that his father had lost the battle of Bosworth and had been killed.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TUDORS.

Henry VIL—1485-1509.

In the year 1495 the Kent men had a chance of practically showing their loyalty, and they took it. Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the two young princes who htad been smothered in the Tower of London by their uncle; Richard the Third, so everybody believed, collected a gang of rascals and thought he would try the effect of a landing in Kent. He arrived off Deal and sent a number of his followers ashore to report upon the feeling of the county before he would risk himself. The gentlemen of Kent, always ready ata moment’s notice to arm themselves agfiinst invaders, assembled and went to Deal. They wanted to get hold of Warbeck himself so they invited him to land, but he, suspecting a trap, declined; the Kent men attacked his followers, killed some, and took two hundred and fifty prisoners, who were afterwards executed. Henry was very pleased at this, and rewarded the loyal Kent men handsomely.

PLAMMOCK’S REBELLION. 1497.

People knew that the king was saving up money, and were tired of being so frequently commanded to grant him loans and subsidies—that is, to lend him money which they

e 2 did not always get back. When Parliament ordered the raising of money for the war with Scotland the Cornishmen (who were very like our Kent men in their sturdy resistance against all attacks on the rights and the liberties of the people) were roused to anger. Flammock, a lawyer, argued that properly speaking the border counties of Northumberland, Cumberland,and Durham should defend the border, and that counties hundreds of miles away should no more be expected to pay for war against the Scots than the border counties should be taxed to pay for the defence of the southern coast. The Cornishmen asked to be led into Kent "as the people there were the freest in England “ and would certainly help them. But Henry had so graciously rewarded the Kent men for their behaviour against Warbeck that they were loyal and would do nothing for the Cornishmen. The Cornishmen, numbering six thousand, encamped on Blackheath. Henry sent out a force of troops to meet them, but the Cornish men, being ill-armed and ill-disciplined, no doubt disheartened at the coldness of the people of Kent, and very likely homesick, were soon beaten and scattered, but were gently dealt with by the king—that is to say, comparatively so. Flammock and Joseph, another leader, were hanged, and as two thousand Cornishmen had been killed in the fight the punishment was considered sufficient.

Henry VIII.—1502-1547.

"Bluff King Hal,” as some people still like to call him, born and baptised at Greenwich, had a good deal to do with Kent during his long reign.

In 1524 Henry wanted money for the war with France. Not wishing to apply to Parliament in the usual way, for fear of a refusal, as Parliament had already made him “rant after grant, much to the vexation of the people, he tried what is called a “ friendly loan,” which means, he said to the people : “Lend me so much money; if you don’t it will be the worse for you,” through his great minister Wolsey. Commissioners were sent into every county to calculate how much each person was to pay, and the demand was for one-tenth of their income or to provide soldiers. But this trick failed, so Wolsey was obliged to apply to Parliament, which granted the levy of another tax. This failed also, and the commissioners who came into Kent were driven away, but the king was spared further anxiety about getting money for the war with France by the issue of the battle of Pavia, in Italy, 1525, by which France was for the time crushed.

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES.

Without troubling you with details about the causes of that great Reformation which gave us our Bible and Prayer Book, and freed our country for ever—with the exception of the short reign of Queen Mary—from the power of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, you should be told that the two chief causes were :—

(1) The spread of knowledge, brought about by the invention of printing, a movement in which a Kentish man named Caxton took a great part.

(2) The strong feeling against the power of the Pope which had been excited by the remonstrance of Martin Luther against the sale of indulgences in particular—that is to say, against the practice of selling pardons for any crimes, no matter how serious, in order that the Pope’s purse might be kept constantly full.

As regards England, one chief cause was the opposition of the Pope to Henry the Eighth’s divorce from his wife Katharine of Arragon. In 1534 the Act of Supremacy made Henry the head of the English Church instead of the Pope. Of course the monks, being Roman Catholics, felt this change very severely, for it was one thing to be governed by the Pope, who was hundreds of miles away, and another to be governed by a king who at any moment mic’ht pay them a visit and inquire into a mode of life which would not bear much inspection. Besides, the influence of the monks as an independent power was gone. So the first time the great abbots and priors expressed their anger at the change of things Henry determined he would crush them once and for all.

Now*, although with the exception of Canterbury, the priories and abbeys of Kent could not be compared with the priories and abbeys of other counties for wealth and magnificence, there were some which were worth putting down from the point of view of a king who had an eye on the treasure he would put into his own pockets.

The priories of Christ Church and St. Augustine’s in Canterbury, for instance, were very rich. So were the nunnery of St. Sepulchre’s, and the priory of St. Gregory and the houses of the Black Friars, and the Franciscans in the same city. There was a famous abbey at Boxley, another at Lesnes near Erith, priories at Dover—a famous and rich one, St. Martin’s—and Folkestone, and Sandwich, and Langden, and Aylesford; abbeys at St. Radigund’s near Dover, at Faversham, and a house of “ Observants” near Greenwich. At any rate, the priors and abbots and monks of Kent do not seem to have been at all behind the rest of the county in their dodges and tricks to get money out of the people.

In 1531 Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington, near Smeeth, called “ the Holy Nun of Kent,” made a great stir which lasted some years. She was a poor girl and subject to hysterical fits, wbich sometimes made her fancy she saw visions and heard heavenly voices, and Masters, the Rector of Aldington, saw that with a little management this affliction might be turned to good account, which he meant might bring in money. So he set to work and trained the poor girl to believe that she was no ordinary servant wench, but a specially inspired person. Having taught the girl her lesson Masters got an image of the Virgin Mary, and Elizabeth was trained to declare that this image would cure her fits, and acted in such a way that the simple country folk believed it, and the Aldington image became an object of pilgrimage from all parts of the country.

The great church people of Canterbury thought it a pity that a small place like Aldington should reap the benefit of such a capital trick, so the image was removed to the cathedral city, and Elizabeth Barton was lodged in the nunnery of St.Sepulchre. Her fame spread over the country, for she was now taught to pretend to be a prophetess—a person who can foretell what is going to happen—and some of the greatest and wisest people in England came to consult her.

Then she went too far. Not content with teHii-** ordinary people what was going to happen to them she, at the bidding of the Canterbury clergy, who were now in great fear and trembling about the attack being made on them by the king, took the part of Queen Katharine, whom the king wanted to get rid of so that he might marry Anne Boleyn, and threatened the king that he would lose his crown and perhaps his life if he persisted in his resolve.

The king laughed at all this, and for three years the Holy Nun of Kent was believed in by the people and upheld by the clergy, but in 1534 she and the five monks who had been her chief teachers were brought to London, tried and executed at Tyburn.

King Henry did not crush all the monasteries at once. In 1536 he began with the smaller houses with incomes less than £200 a year—that is, £2,400 of our money—and put down three hundred and seventy-six. Two years later he attacked the greater houses, and at about this time another piece of Kentish ecclesiastical humbug was exposed. This was the famous “ Rood,” or Image of Grace, at Boxley—an image of the Virgin of which the bod}7 bowed, the forehead frowned and the lower lip dropped, to the amazement of the poor simple country people, and no doubt of others who were not poor and were only simple inasmuch as they were superstitious, who of course thought that the image did so of its own accord, and came by thousands to offer prayers, and what was more to the point, jewels and money.

This piece of monkish carpentering was taken up to London, made to go through its performance at Whitehall, then the machinery which moved the body and forehead and lips was shown, and the image dashed to pieces.

At this time the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury was at the height of its popularity. It is said, for instance, that during the year 1538 there were no offerings at all at God’s altar, only £4 Is. 8d. at the Virgin Mary’s altar; but £954 6s. 3d., or more than £12,000 of our money, at the altar of St. Thomas.

No wonder that the monks of Canterbury were getting uneasy about the king’s movements !

Well, the first thing that was done was very funny. As if poor Thomas a Becket was still alive he was ordered to appear within thirty days and answer to the charge of treason. As of course he did not appear his bones were taken from beneath the magnificent shrine and scattered about; his name was removed from the prayer books as that of a traitor; all figures of him on the stained glass windows were destroyed, except those on three windows of the Trinity Chapel which still remain; the splendid offerings at the shrine were packed away for the king’s use, and all that is left to remind us of a spot to which the greatest, and bravest, and best of all nations had come as pilgrims during four hundred years, is the flight of steps on the right hand of the choir as you go up to the tomb of the Black Prince, worn away into hollows by the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who used to ascend them on their knees.

On September 30th, 1538, his bones were shown for the last time to a party of French ladies; but in 1888 the skeleton of a big man with a deep wound in his skull was found beneath the floor of the cathedral crypt, and this has been decided by recent discoveries to be the skeleton of Becket which had been removed and buried by devout people at the first news that the shrine was going to be destroyed.

Henry the Eighth made a great many journeys in Kent, and used to stop at the Archbishop’s palaces at Otford, Leeds, Charing, and Canterbury. In his reign were built the castles at Sandown, Deal, and Walmer as a defence against possible French invasion, the first-named of which was sold the other day for £40 !

He was very fond of Greenwich palace, where, as I have said, he was born, used to hunt much in the park, and kept several Christmas festivals with high state. When he was courting Anne Boleyn, who was living at Hever Castle, he would ride over from Greenwich, and tradition says when he reached a certain hill whence he could see the castle, and which bears his name, blew his horn to give notice of his approach. I don’t know the hill although I have looked for it. There is a Mount Harry at Sevenoaks; but what a horn it would be which could be heard from there to Hever Castle !

Henry was married to Katharine of Arragon at Greenwich. His youngest sister, the Princess Mary Tudor, was married to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in the church of the Grey Friars there. Anne of Cleves and Anne Boleyn he married at Greenwich, and the latter had the park arranged exactly on the plan of her father’s park at Blickling, in Norfolk. On May morning 1515, Henry and Katharine of Arragon went maying in the woods about Shooters Hill, and had an open-air festival there, a description of which may interest you :—

At Shooters Hill the archers of the king’s guard met them dressed like Robin Hood and his outlaws, and begged that the royal party “ would enter the good green wood, and see how outlaws lived.”

On this, Henry, turning to the queen, asked her “ If she and her damsels would venture into a thicket with so many outlaws 1 “

Katharine replied, “ That where he went she was content to go.”

The king then handed her to a sylvan bower formed of hawthorn boughs, spring flowers, and moss, where was laid out a breakfast of venison. The queen partook of the feast and was greatly delighted with this lodge in the wilderness. On their way home to Greenwich they were met by a flowery car, drawn by five horses, each of which was ridden by a fair damsel. These burst into song when they met the queen at the foot of Shooters Hill, and preceded them, singing May carols all the way to Greenwich. (Strickland)

Mary.—1553-1558.

The great Kentish event of this reign was the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington, son of the lover of Anne Boleyn.

In 1554 the queen’s marriage with that poor creature, Philip of Spain, about whom you read in that most fascinating “ History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic “ by Mr. Motley, was very unpopular in England, for the people, with a new born dread of Papistry, and especially of Spanish Papistry, seemed to foresee that the alliance was the first step towards England becoming one of the wretched colonies of Spain. Sir Thomas Wyatt raised Kent, with the exception of Canterbury, where the Sheriff of Kent and Lord Abergavenny held the people loyal to Mary, and, gathering troops, pursued a party of the rebels under Sir Henry Isley and Anthony Knevett, who were on their way to join Wyatt at Rochester, came up with them near Wrotham and put them to flight.

In the meanwhile Mary energetically appealed to the citizens of London, promising them that if the Houses of Paliament should decide against her marriage with Philip she would abandon it, and sent a herald to Rochester with an assurance of pardon for the rebels if they would at once disperse. Wyatt’s answer was that they needed no pardon, and the London troops were about to fire on the town when suddenly they all declared themselves Wyatt’s men. WTith this important addition to his strength Wyatt should at once have marched on London, but he wasted time in besieging Cowling Castle and took it. In the meanwhile Mary appealed again to the Londoners and with such success that by the time Wyatt reached the Thames he found Southwark Bridge barred against him. So he marched down the river bank to Kingston, crossed the river, and marched back to London by the other bank. By this time however his followers were disheartened by the loyal spirit of London which Wyatt had assured them would declare for him, and they deserted in great numbers, so that he arrived at Temple Bar with but a few men, was easily taken prisoner, and executed on Tower Hill.

The town of Maidstone had its freedom taken away for the part it had taken in this rebellion.

The English people’s fears about the Spanish marriage were partially realised, for Mary was a bigoted Roman Catholic, or rather, she was blindly devoted to a husband whose entire aim in life was to stamp out heresy and kill all who were not Roman Catholics, and what is called the Marian Persecution began.

During the three years it lasted nearly three hundred people were burned, and nowhere, except perhaps in Essex, was the persecution fiercer than in the diocese of Canterbury, where Richard Thornton, Bishop of Dover, was the Inquisitor or judge. The most terrible cases were those of twenty-three men and women who were burned at Canterbury, five men starved in Canterbury Castle, and five women and two men burned at Maidstone. The first female martyr in England was a poor Kentish woman named Margaret Polley, who was burned at Tonbridge. In all fifty-six people were executed in Kent during this persecution.

Elizabeth.—1558-1603.

Elizabeth was born at Greenwich. She kept her court at Greenwich, and always celebrated with great pomp our grand old national festival of St. George, which I am sorry to say has been allowed to be neglected and forgotten, as well as many other of the great days of Merrie England.

I don’t know of any events of actually historic importance during this reign particularly associated with Kent, but I may tell you of some interesting Kentish facts.

During the reign of Elizabeth the Kentish woollen industry was in full swing. Whilst the Spaniards under Alva were treating the poor people of the Netherlands in a manner which makes one’s blood boil to read of, a great many of the persecuted fled to England for refuge—just as persecuted people from all parts of Europe always have done, always do, and always will do. A great many baize and flannel workers settled in >Sandwich, and started an industry which actually preserved the old Cinque Port from absolute decay, for the sea had receded from it, kings and armies no longer used it as a port, and merchants no longer crowded its streets and quays as of yore.

Many of these Flemings, too, were expert vegetable and flower gardeners, and to them we owe not only many flowers and vegetables, but what we had not before, a regular scientific system of gardening.

Other Flemings settled at Maidstone and wove linen thread, and for a long time after they had gone their peculiar work was known as “ Dutch.”

In 1561 numbers of Frenchmen, Protestants flying from the persecutions in their own country, were allowed to settle in Canterbury, and practised silk weaving. Formerly they had their looms in the cathedral crypt, side by side with the chapel which was given them for worship, and their descendants still worship in the same chapel alchough the silk industry has gone from Canterbury to Spitalfields in London.

They also made “ lustreings “—some shiny silken stuff I suppose, brocades, satins, paduasoys, black and coloured velvets, watches, cutlery, instruments, hardware, and toys. The silk for the decoration of the Prince of Wales’s nicagnificent Carlton House was made in 1789 at Canterbury. In the year 1665 there were one hundred and twenty-six master weavers and thirteen hundred workmen, of which seven hundred were English, in Canterbury. In 1676 the number had risen to two thousand five hundred, and the brotherhood held a charter of its own.

Kent was also now the centre of the ship building trade for the Royal Navy, and much of the oak which had covered the Weald before its clearance w*as used in building the “ wooden walls of Old England.”

In Henry the Seventh’s reign the “Great Henry” was built at Chatham at a cost of, it is said, one hundred and fourteen thousand pounds. In Henry the Eighth’s reign were built at Woolwich the “ Regent,” of one thousand tons burden; the “Henry Grace de Dieu,” which cost—I give the figures exactly—” Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-eight pounds, eight shillings, and three farthings !” and the “ Great Harry.”

Some alarm was created in this reign about the consumption of the trees in the Weald of Sussex for the iron furnaces, as the Wealden forest supplied almost all the oak for the ship building of the Royal Navy.

There was never so great an iron industry in Kent as in Sussex, but during this reign of Elizabeth there were furnaces at Cranbrook, Hawkhurst, Goudhurst, Horsmonden, Cowden, Tonbridge, Biddenden,and Ashurst, and in old farm houses you may still see fire grate backs and kitchen utensils made of Kentish or Sussex iron, and in one or two churchyards even slabs of iron over graves.

Moreover, a great many cannon were made and sent abroad to nations who might use them against us. Indeed, I have read somewhere that upon a cannon fished up from the wreck of one of the Spanish Armada ships off the coast of Ireland was found the mark of a Sussex ironfounder.

In the year 1573 Queen Elizabeth made a state "Progress “ through Kent. It may be interesting to you to read where she went, and it is amusing to hear what Lord Burleigh wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury about it:—

"The queen had a hard beginning of her Progress in the Wild of Kent… where surely were more dangerous rocks and valleys and much worse ground than in the Peak “ (of Derbyshire).

She started from Greenwich and reached Croydon, where she remained seven days at Archbishop Parker’s palace— part of which you may still see. Thence she went to Orpington—or rather, to Sir Percival Hart’s house <at Lullingstone, where she was entertained with a magnificent nautical masque or play. Thence she went to Knole at Sevenoaks, her own palace. Thence to Lord Bergavenny’s {empty}.at Birlingham, and to the same nobleman’s castle at Eridge, where she stayed six days. Thence to the house of the old Kentish Colepepers at Bedgbury, to Hempstead and to Rye. Thence to Sissinghurst, belonging to Mr. Baker, whom she knighted. Then to Boughton Malherbe, Hothfield, and to her own house at Westenhanger. Then she went to Dover, and from Dover to Folkestone, where the knights and gentlemen of Kent gave her a splendid greeting. From Folkestone she travelled to Canterbury, where she was lodged at the palace of St. Augustine. Here she was splendidly entertained for a fortnight by Archbishop Parker, and celebrated her birthday. Then she went on to Sandwich, where she had a magnificent reception. There were banquets and sea sports at Stonar, and she was so pleased with the cookery at the feast given her in the Grammar School at Sandwich that she allowed the usual rule th.at no food should be offered to a sovereign unless it had been previously tasted by the official taster to be broken.

On the last day of her visit to Sandwich a pretty sight was offered her. On a raised turf bank were seated more than a hundred English and Dutch children weaving fine cloth.

She returned to Canterbury, went on to Sittingbourne— which was then, and until the time of mail coaches, a regular stopping place of the great folk travelling between Dover and London—and from Sittingbourne she travelled to Rochester, where she stayed five days at the Crown Inn.

From Rochester she went to Chatham. Here she stayed at a house which she desired should always be called Satis House, meaning that it was all sufficient for her comfort and entertainment, from the Latin word satis— enough; and this name is still borne by the house which stands where the old one did, and of which you may remember to have read, or one day you will read, in Charles Dickens’s "Great Expectations.” From Chatham she went to Dartford, and stayed at one of the abbeys which Henry the Eighth had put down, where Anne of Cleves lived a great deal. From Dartford she returned to Greenwich.

Of course you must remember that these “ Progresses “ were very longaffairs, occupying several weeks—this one, for instance, lasted ten weeks—for the roads of England were little better than big cart ruts and were quite useless in wet weather. Even the greatest and wealthiest people preferred to travel on horseback or in chairs carried by men, called “ litters,” to the risk of being upset and breaking their bones by travelling in the clumsy carriages of the period, which were made without straps or springs and were called “whirlicotes.” Queen Elizabeth was carried about in a “ litter “ under a canopy during her Progresses.

Our Kent coast men of this period were sad pirates, and complaints were constantly being made by the Court of Spain—Spaniards were the particular objects of English horror and hatred—of the daring acts of piracy and pillage done by Dover and Margate men. Thomas Cobham, of Cowling Castle, was one of the most reckless of these sea dogs, and for attacking and sinking in the Bay of Biscay a Spanish ship, with the treasure of which he made off, he was tried and the Spaniards were only satisfied when they were told that he had been sentenced to be taken to the Tower of London, stripped naked, placed with a sharp stone under each of his shoulders, and on his stomach a gun too heavy for him to bear, but not heavy enough to crush him at once. There he was to be left till he died, with a few grains of corn to eat and foul water to drink. (Froude) But this sentence was really never carried out.

THE ARMADA. 1588.

The Armada had been long threatened. In 1586 Kent was ordered to have in readiness 1,500 men, 9,000 pounds of powder, 900 pounds of lead, and six cannon, which was nearly double what was required of any other southern county. Beacons—iron grates in which fires were lighted placed at the top of tall posts—were fixed at Goudhurst, Cranbrook, Hawkhurst, Rolvenden, Tenterden, Coxheath, Westerham, Ightham, Shooter’s Hill, Oak of Honor Hill, near Sydenham, and even the clergy were trained to the use of arms should necessity arise.

The Cinque Ports contributed to the English fleet six ships of one hundred and sixty tons and more each, at a cost of £43,000 : not much compared with what they used to do in earlier times, but we must remember that by the reign of Queen Elizabeth once famous ports such as Sandwich, Romney, Rye, and Winchelsea, were losing their old importance because the sea had receded from them. Moreover, the west country was becoming famous as a nursery for sailors, so that most of the splendid exploits of our sailors during this reign were performed by Devonshire men and Cornishmen.

But we nmy be quite sure that when

“Eastward straight from wild Blackheath the warlike errand

went,

And roused in many an ancient hall the gallant squires of Kent;” a ready reply was made by our county men, who were under the command of Sir Thomas Scott, of Scott’s Hall, near Smeeth.

You must never forget that one of the darling heroes of English history of this, or of any time, was a Kent man. This was Sir Philip Sidney, of Penshurst, “ who was a gentleman finished and complete, who trod from his cradle to his grave amidst incense and flowers, and died in a dream of glory; “ “ who,” says Lord Brooke, “ was a true model of worth, a man fit for conquest, plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest and hardest amongst men; withal such a lover of mankind and goodness that whosoever had real parts in him found comfort, participation (sympathy), and protection to the uttermost of his power.”

I need not repeat to you the beautiful story of his death; a story so beautiful that even the priggish pryers of the present day, ever alert to prove to be false our pet stories and traditions, have left it alone. And so you may believe that other pretty story told by Sir Walter Scott in "Kenilworth “ about another gallant Englishman, Sir Walter Raleigh, who, although not a Kent man, owed a good deal of his position to his covering a Kentish puddle with his cloak.

Most of our fine old Kentish houses, such as Charlton, Cobham, Knole, and Penshurst, if not actually built in this reign, are Elizabethan in style, and are associated with the brilliant festivities of the Elizabethan period.

if

CHAPTER VII.

THE STEWARTS.

James I.—1603-1625.

This poor ricketty, slobbering, scholarly Scotsman liked Greenwich much, and hunted in the park in his characteristic style—that is, propped and bolstered up on his horse so that he could not have fallen if he had tried to; and in Sir Walter Scott’s “ Fortunes of Nigel “ you will read how he was scared by an adventure with Lord Glenvarloch. A bad Cobham of the grand old house was engaged in a couple of plots against James called the Main and the Bye Plots, at the beginning of this reign; the Main Plot having for its object the placing of the king’s cousin, Arabella Stewart, on the throne, and the Bye Plot that of getting hold of the king himself and “ improving “ the government. Both failed, however, and Cobham got off with haying his hetad on the executioner’s block—thereby undergoing the disgrace of being beheaded without being beheaded. Raleigh was concerned with Cobham in the first plot, and was also leniently dealt with, but to the eternal shame of our county man was afterwards executed upon what is now believed to be the entirely false evidence of Cobham, whom he described as a “ base, dishonourable, poor soul!”

At Charlton House lived Henry, Prince of Wales, with his tutor, Adam Newton. His early death at the age of eighteen was a great grief, not only to his father, but to the people generally, for he showed great promise, “ would have proved an heroic and military character. Had he ascended the throne the days of Agincourt and Cressy had been revived, and Henry IX. had rivalled Henry V.”—so says Disraeli the elder. Note, ye Kentish boys, that Prince Henry was a golf player, and the Royal Blackheath Golf Club was founded in this reign.

Charles L—1625-1649.

I have now come to an interesting period of our Kentish history—perhaps the most interesting, and moreover curious as showing how a people, ever to the fore in asserting, and, when necessary, fighting for their rights, could yet retain an almost invincible reverence for the office of king.

In Kent, opinion about the tremendous questions which were agitating the country from end to end was at first decidedly on the side of the Parliament, but was changed later on by what Kent men considered to be a violation of ancient rights and customs, and by the conviction that the conquering party was going too far. When the king played the part of tyrant Kent was against him. When the army after Naseby threatened to play the same part Kent rose for the king, and the extraordinary enthusiasm with which the noblemen and gentlemen and people of Kent did this only makes the trickery and double dealing of Charles the more disgusting, and makes all the grander the chance he threw away. You may depend upon it that when the gentlemen of Kent turn against a sovereign he or she must be very bad indeed.

Although my business is really only to tell you about the history of England so far as it is associated with the history of Kent I am obliged now and then to go a little out of

F 2

my way to make the road we are travelling together more

easy.

We have now got to the eve of the great civil war, and

some of you naturally ask, What was the civil war about 1 Well, in a very few words I can tell you. King Charles intended to govern the country in his own way, and for his own benefit, without asking or taking the advice of those people who are placed in high position for the express purpose of giving this advice. Parliament and the people of England determined that he should not. Necessary result—a series of collisions ending in one great one, called war.

In 1642, after Charles had insulted the whole nation by attempting to arrest five members of Parliament whom he imagined to be the chief organisers of the opposition to him, the freeholders of Kent—by whom I mean the men who had the right of voting at elections —marched to London to show their sympathy with Parliament. Later on, when the king declared war by setting up his standard at Nottingham, a petition was presented by the “ Lords, Knights, Gentry, and Commons of Kent “ to serve for the Parliament. Now note this : they desired to serve for the Parliament, not to fight against and do harm to the king, but “ to rescue him out of the hands of his wicked advisers.” Bad as he was, they would give him every chance, for was he not after all the "Lord’s anointed 1”

When the war began in earnest Parliament acted promptly. Dover Castle was secured, suspected royalists— men of the king’s party—were imprisoned, and the houses of William Boteler and Sir Edward Dering plundered.

At Canterbury arms and powder were found at the Deanery. The Parliament soldiers broke into the cathedral, battered down the organ, pulled up the communion rails, hacked the image of our Lord out of the communion table embroidery, and made a target of our Lord’s statue over the south gate. Why 1 Because one of the chief accusations against the king was that he was planning to make England Popish, and that he had a great deal to do with that terrible rebellion of Roman Catholics in Ireland in which the English had been murdered by thousands, and which was one of the chief causes of the civil war. The troops of the Parliament were nearly all Presbyterians, so that all images and pictures were hateful to them.

In 1643 a Royalist meeting in Kent was put down, but already the feeling in favour of the king was growing, for the people of Kent began to see that triumph of the Parliament and its Presbyterian army might mean a jump for ordinary folk from the frying pan into the fire. And so in 1645 Parliamentary recruiting for the army—which, no doubt, meant the compulsory pressing of men—■ was forcibly resisted in Kent. Five hundred recruits on their way to London rose upon their guards, seized Sir Percivall Hart’s house at Lullingstone, and stood a regular siege against two troops of horse and two cannon. At Christmas, 1647, the Kentish people had a taste of what the triumph of the army—which was now the supreme power—meant for them. The king had been utterly beaten by this New Model Army, as it was called, had fled to his countrymen, the Scots, who, with characteristic smartness, kept him as a hostage until the English people should pay them their claims for services rendered—a prisoner in fact, for although a hostage does not exactly mean a prisoner, the Scots knew that to get possession of the king’s person was the great object of Cromwell and his army, and that they would pay the claims to get him.

Well, Kent was ruled by sour-faced, canting Roundheads, as they are called—men of the kind who would, as Lord Macaulay says, stop bull baiting, not because it gave pain to the bull, but because it gave pleasure to the people; and the authorities in Canterbury not merely ordered that there should be none of the customary joviality and festivity at Christmas, 1647, but that shops should be openedand a market held on Christmas Day. Up rose the sturdy Canterbury men at this. Football was played in the streets, the Mayor was knocked down. On the 27th the rioting was serious, and cries of “ Up with King Charles ! “ and "Down with Parliament! “ openly raised. Finally, the Mayor and magistrates who had given the unpopular orders were driven out of the city and the gates barred against them. Quiet was only restored by the arrival of the trained bands—answering to our Militia—who broke through the walls and unhinged the gates.

In January, 1648, the Grand Jury of Kent refused to receive the complaint against the rioters made by the authorities, and sent up to Cromwejl the same petition which had already been made by Surrey and Essex—that an arrangement should be made with the king, that the bullying army should be disbanded, and that the known laws of the land should be restored.

This petition was forbidden to be sent by the County Committee, which was of course composed of men of the victorious party, and so the feeling of Kent towards them became one of absolute hatred, which in the year 1648 broke out in that fierce rebellion called “ The Kentish Faire.”

To understand this properly we must look back for a minute at the state of affairs. King Charles was a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight. The Scots had delivered him up to the army upon payment of their claim of £400,000 for services rendered. He was taken to Hampton Court, where he lived to all appearance as a free man. Here he plotted to escape, and arranged for a Royalist rising in Scotland so that the terrible army under Fairfax would be obliged to go north, when he hoped the Londoners, glad to get rid of their stern masters, would declare and rise for him.

But the Scots delayed their movements, and in the meanwhile the last spurts of Royalist resistance were beino* stamped out in the West of England. Charles made an attempt to escape from the castle, but it was prevented, and he was more sharply looked after.

Then Kent petitioned for the “ arrangement” with the king, as had Surrey aiid Essex, saying “ Kent will be loyal to her king should all the rest of the kingdom prove wicked.”

Here is a Kentish song of the day :— "Kentish men, keep your king,

Long swords and brave hearts bring; Down with the rebels, and slit their crop ears !

Hell now is wanting rogues,

Send there the canting dogs, Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers

God and our king for grace,

Leave now your wives’ embrace, Up and avenge all their insults for years !

Ironsides ! Who’s afear ?

Pack ‘em to Lucifer,

Ride to the scurry, my Kent cavaliers !

Can’t you imagine this being roared out by half-a-dozen handsome, reckless, flushed young fellows round the flagondecked table of one of our ancient halls of Kent 1 I can; and although I’m not on the side of King Charles, I can’t help a thrill of enthusiasm when I try to picture the scene, and a pang of sorrow that so utterly unworthy a man could inspire such splendid enthusiasm.

Here’s a verse of another Kentish cavalier song, by Robert Browning. Is not the swing of the chorus grand 1

Marching Along.

” Kentish Sir Byng stood for his king,

Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing;

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,

Marched them along, Fifty score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song ! Chorus—Fifty score strong ! Fifty score strong !

Great-hearted gentlemen singing this song ! “

I could give you a lot of others, but we must get on with the Faire.

The Kent men began by sweeping all the Roundhead authorities from the north and east and sea-board—Rochester, Sittingbourne, Faversham, and Sandwich were taken. At Rochester there was a great meeting, and the county gentlemen agreed to lead the work and a county gathering on Blackheath arranged. Then Dartford and Deptford were seized. The fleet stood for the king. Sandown and Walmer Castles were taken, but Deal was successfully defended by Colonel Rich against the Royalists, and Dover was besieged.

I like to record the names of the Kentish gentlemen concerned with those stirring times. Lord Goring was the commander-in-chief; Mr. Edward Hales was general; Sir John Many, major-general; Sir Thomas Peyton, lieutenantgeneral; and other officers were Sir Robert Tracy, Sir John Dorell, Sir Richard Hardres, Colonel Washington, Colonel L’Estrange; and, of course, a Colepeper. Their watchword was “ King and Kent! “

On Blackheath Essex men joined the Kent men.

Fairfax, the Parliamentary general, who had jointly with Cromwell won the battle of Naseby, came out from London, and at the news of his approach the Kent men retired to Dartford. Fairfax occupied Blackheath, and marched with eight thousand men by Eltham towards Rochester—the main road by Dartford being occupied by the Royalists. Finding Rochester barred against him Fairfax went round by Mailing to Meopham and halted.

Meanwhile other Kent men assembled on Penenden Heath, seven thousand in number. The Earl of Holland was elected commander, and the Earl of Norwich as leader —a worse man for the place could not have been chosen. This was at noon on June 1st, 1648. At five o’clock in the afternoon Fairfax’s regiment was seen "through perspective glasses “ on the west side of the Medway. One thousand Kent men were posted to guard the river at Aylesford, and three thousand were placed in Maidstone.

Fairfax turned south, crossed the Medway at Farleigh Bridge, crossed Banning Heath, whence he could see Norwich’s Kent men all about Kits Coty House, went down the road by Barming Rectory, and so turned the Royalists left—that means, got round on to their left side, which would force them to make a corresponding change of position.

The Royalists had thrown up a barricade—a wall made of anything handy—stones, earth, casks, and even carts— where the Tovil brook runs into the Medway, and there was a fight in which the Roundheads won. Another bridge over the Len was bravely defended, but by seven o’clock Fairfax was before Maidstone.

Near Farleigh Bridge is the Postling field, which is pointed out as the burial place of those who fell in the fight at the bridge.

Then the fighting began in real earnest—the Kent men, probably not very well armed, and certainly not very well drilled and disciplined, against that infantry which was to, as Macaulay says, “ drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp (fortification) which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the Marshals of France.”

But the Royalists were driven into the town, and the fighting which followed was afterwards described by a Parliamentary soldier who had gone all through the civil war as the hardest he had ever done. There were barricades to be taken. Every house along Stone Street and up St. Gabriel’s Hill was occupied and fired from. There was an earthwork at the top of Stone Street, and at the top of St. Gabriel’s Hill there was a battery of cannon.

But the iron discipline of the New Model Army prevailed and Maidstone was won, with thirteen hundred prisoners,

five hundred horse, three thousand arms, nine flags and

eight cannon.

All this time the Earl of Norwich and his men did

nothing but remain about the Aylesford hills, and when he heard that Maidstone was taken he just rode back to Rochester.

Fairfax seems to have treated Maidstone leniently, for he allowed the Kent men to disperse without carrying out the executions and plundering which generally followed the capture of a town in these days.

The Earl of Norwich and his men went on from Rochester to London, expecting the people there to side with them, and reached Blackheath, pursued by the Parliamentary officer Whalley.

But the Londoners showed no sympathy; so, thinking that the county of Essex would be more loyal, Norwich went on alone to Colchester, leaving his Kentish followers. These poor fellows, unaccustomed to be far away from home, felt the same objection to cross the Thames and fight in an unknown county that the brave Cornish men during this same civil war felt to crossing the river Tamar, which divides their county from Devonshire, began to get homesick, thought that they were deserted by their leader, and about five hundred of them fled into Surrey.

From this point the operations were carried on in Essex, and the end of the “ Kentish Faire” soon came. Dover Castle, which was still being besieged, was relieved. Canterbury surrendered to Ireton, and the Castles of Sandown and Walmer were blockaded—that is, cut off from the outer world so as to be starved into submission.

Parliament thought so highly of the victory that a thanksgiving service was ordered in all the churches of London and Westminster.

It may be interesting to you to know that during these troublous times people found leisure to attend to the punishment of “ witches.”

What is a witch ? Well, a witch was always believed to be an old woman possessed of all sorts of magical powers, such as the causing of good or bad luck, the punishment of people who offended her, the telling of fortunes, and the curing of diseases. Many people, not children or fools, really thought that witches rode through the air on broom sticks on stormy nights; and many people at this present day, fools, but not children, believe that poor harmless old women who live by themselves, and who pretend to know more than other folk, are witches.

At any rate, in 1645, Joane Williford, Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott were executed at Faversham for witchcraft; and in 1652 five Cranbrook women and one Lenham woman were hung “ for the devilish crime, having bewitched nine children, one man, and one woman, caused the loss of £500 worth of cattle, and much corn at sea.”

You may be interested to know that the sentence of death on Charles was read by a Kent man, Broughton, of Maidstone, who was Clerk of the Court, and that the king’s body was embalmed by a Maidstone doctor.

Charles IL —1660-1685.

The southern part of England went well-nigh mad over the restoration of Charles the Second. Englishmen had always been a jovial, holiday-loving, ballad-singing, bellringing people, and they were heartily sick of the stern, morose rule of the Puritans, who regarded merry-making as a crime, and refused to believe that happiness and godliness could exist together.

You can read in Sir Walter Scott’s “ Woodstock “ a far better description of the splendid pageant which greeted King Charles on Blackheath, as he passed on his triumphal progress from Dover to London, than any other that I know of, and also how the gallant old cavalier, Sir Henry Lee, was spared just long enough to kiss his sovereign’s hand.

But this outbreak of jollification was nearly the ruin of our country, for amidst the enjoyment of pleasures from which they had been so long held the rulers of the land forgot their duties. Our navy was rotten and badly officered, and it was a common thing for a man to command a troop of horse one week and a frigate the next.

So the Dutch beat us at sea, and swept up the Medway, destroying ships as they went, and were only prevented from sailing right up to London by the gallant defence of Upnor Castle, near Rochester, which beat off six Dutch men-of-war and five fire ships so that they had to retreat to the Channel.

Never in our history, before or after, have we sunk so low as an European power as during this reign, and perhaps the most disgraceful business of all was the Treaty of Dover, signed in 1670 between Charles and the French king, Louis the Fourteenth, by which Charles engaged to profess publicly the Roman Catholic religion and to assist Louis in conquering the brave Dutch, whilst Louis agreed to help Charles with an army should any insurrection break out in England.

James IL—1685-1688.

James was married to Mary of Modena at Dover, and made his entry into London by the famous old Canterbury and Rochester road.

Three years later he was in the neighbourhood of the same road under very different circumstances—on the occasion of his flight to Faversham, intending to get to France, when the news that William, Prince of Orange, grandson of Charles the First, had landed and was marching on London to protect the liberties of the English people.

He was recognised at Faversham, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales—a Kentish gentleman who was exceedingly unpopular on account of the part played by him and his patron the king in a case wherein the laws of the land had been coolly set aside in his favour—and both of them would have been handled roughly by the crowd had not the gentlemen of the neighbourhood formed a body guard for them.

So saturated were the people with a feeling of loyalty to the person of the sovereign, even after the last two abominable reigns, that a Kentish peasant was found ready and willing to take a message from James to the Council telling them of his plight. For a time James was forgiven, and receivedalmost a hearty welcome from the people on his road to London. But it could not last. He was obstinate, and mistook this show of feeling for leave to keep on in his old course of bad government, to set aside the laws of the country, and to irritate the people by his Popish prejudices. William of Orange was in power, and James, seeing that his game was played, retired to Rochester, where he lived at the house of Sir William Head. Here he was warned that he had best take his chance and escape, for the nation was against him and his father’s head had been cut off for no worse behaviour than his, so he got a boat and went, and a very good riddance he was.

The Kentish cloth trade began to decay very much under the last Stewarts. This was wrongly attributed to the destruction of timber for the iron manufacture, but in reality it was owing to Acts of Parliament which prohibited the sending abroad of undyed or white cloth (which was followed by the emigration of two or three Kentish cloth workers to the continent), and by the high custom house duties levied by the Dutch upon all cloth brought into their country.

William III.—1689-1702.

In 1696 what was known as Fenwick’s plot was discovered. The object of this plot was to attack the king and kill him as he went to hunt in Richmond Park. The plot was arranged at Hurst, near Lympne, but was betrayed. Fenwick fled. “ The bells of all the parish churches of Romney Marsh rang the alarm; the country was up; every path was guarded; every thicket was beaten; every hut was searched, and at length the fugitive was found in bed.” (Macaulay) He was beheaded on Tower Hill.

In the last year of this reign, 1701, was presented to the House of Commons the “ Kentish Petition,” which asserted that the Commons would do more good by turning their addresses to the king into bills of supply—which meant that public business should be attended to before anything else. This was considered treasonable and impertinent, and the gentlemen who presented the petition—Champneys, of Westenhanger; Colepeper, of Preston Hall, Aylesford; Colepeper, of Hollingbourne; Hamilton of Chelston; and Polhill, of Chipstead—were imprisoned until Parliament had finished sitting for the session.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BRUNSWICKS.

George IL—1727-1760.

You see I have skipped the reigns of Anne and George the First, and the reason for this is that the history of Kent is becoming more and more mixed with the history of England. So from now we shall hear very little of Kent playing a separate part in public affairs, and I shall just pick out such bits about our county as I think will interest you.

One fact, however, is always to be remembered, that no matter how much the individuality of Kent fades, she always remains, and will remain, the bulwark of England against foreign invasion.

Norfolk men have a rhyme :

” He who would old England win

Must at Weyboume Hope begin;

because the deep water close to the shore at Weybourne makes the landing of troops easy, but I think we may be sure that should we ever be threatened by a foreign invasion Kent would be the first object of attack, just as it was to Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen. So Kent must always be ready. I read in the "Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1745—the year when Charles Stewart, the grandson of James the Second, called “ The Young Pretender,” made his romantic attempt to get the crown of England, that Admiral Vernon sent a warning to the governor of De.al Castle to be ready for an invasion by Irishmen from France on behalf of the Pretender. Thereupon the Deputy Lieutenant of Kent issued a proclamation calling upon all men to assemble the next day at Swinfield Minnis or Heath, near Dover (the same place where, you remember, King John gave up his crown to the Pope’s messenger). All parishes within twenty miles of the sea coast were to send well armed men, and those men living near the heath to bring pickaxes, shovels, etc. So well did the people respond that at the appointed time there were two thousand well-armed menassembled.

George III.—1760-1820.

In 1794 Wilberforce brought before the House of Commons his proposal for the Abolition of the iSlave Trade. He was encouraged to do this “ after a conversation with Mr. Pitt in the open air at the foot of an old tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent into the Vale of Keston “—so you may read on the back of the stone seat close to the old tree, which, I am glad to see, has at last been railed round and protected from picnickers and climbing boys.

There was an alarm of invasion in 1778 from the French, who were actively backing up the colonists of North America in their glorious battle against tyranny. A great review was held at Coxheath, between Maidstone and Marden, which was the Aldershot of those days. The king was present, and lodged at Leeds Castle, his host, strange to say, being a descendant of the Parliamentary General Fairfax who had done so much to bring Charles the First to the scaffold.

In 1803 England was agitated from end to end by the news that Bonaparte was coming over with an army. Nowhere was there greater excitement than in Kent, which, as I said before, was still the bulwark of the country. Read Wordsworth’s sonnet to the men of Kent if you think I am given to brag unduly about the old county. Volunteers were enlisted in every town and village, and in a very short time England had an army of three hundred and eighty thousand men ready for the Frenchmen, in addition to the regular army—not bad when you remember that the entire population of England, Wales and Scotland was only ten millions and a half.

Camps were formed at Coxheath, Chatham, Barham Downs, Dover, and Shorncliffe. The military canal was dug from Hythe to Appledore, by which not only could troops, provisions, and ammunition be moved from place to place, but in case of dire necessity the whole country about could be flooded. The Martello towers, with which you are familiar, were built, their name being taken from a tower in Corsica called Mortella, which in 1794, garrisoned by only thirty-eight men, was splendidly defend ed against a combined land and sea attack by Lord Hood and MajorGeneral Dundas. (Brewer’s Phrase and Fable)

I wish I could give you the numbers for Kent. Our sea fencibles, however, consisting of fishermen and coast men, had three districts—from Dungeness to Sandgate, of which New Romney was the assembly place; from Sandgate to Sandown, with Dover as centre; and from Sandown to the North Foreland, with Ramsgate as centre. They were under county captains and commanders, and numbered nineteen thousand men, of whom the monthly cost was seven thousand one hundred pounds. They only had one chance of showing the stuff they were made of. That was when a French privateer attacked two brigs off the North Foreland, and out went forty or fifty of the fencibles, beat off the Frenchmen, and rescued the brigs.

Privateering—that is, the fitting out of armed vessels by private individuals for the purpose of capturing or destroying the merchant vessels of a power at war with us

G —w.as in full swing at the beginning of this century. The "Catharine and Mary “ was a famous Deal privateer. >She cost only £1,600, and in three months she captured prizes worth £60,000, but she was at last knocked to bits, and her captain and crew made prisoners after a terrible fight with a Frenchman.

There were thousands of French prisoners in England at this time. Some were confined in the hulks in the Medway, and theirs was a pitiable fate—imprisoned in crowded, pestilential quarters, badly fed, and brutally treated by their guards. Others were shut up in Sissinghurst Castle. They were handy, ingenious fellows, and made a little money by selling straw hats, articles made out of the bones from their meals, pictures in coloured feathers, curiosities, such as fully-rigged ships in bottles, inlaid wood and so forth. Smuggling, too, was carried on to a large extent along the Kentish coast, especially by Romney M.arsh. Hawkhurst was a great centre; so was Hythe, in the main street of which you may see a lookout on the roof of a house which is said to have been used by the smugglers. The only enemy of the smuggler was the Government. We were at war with France, but the smuggling luggers ran between the two coasts just as usual. The vaults and belfries of churches, and the cellars of halls and manor houses were used as storage places by the smugglers, for parsons and country gentlemen were glad enough to give up storage room in return for good tobacco, tea, spirits and lace, for which they would have to pay dearly in a shop.

Still, the smugglers got bitten very severely sometimes. In September, 1773, French silks and lace to the value of £15,000 were seized by the revenue people and the dragoons in a house at Hawkinge, near Hythe. In the same year the officers met a party of smugglers with thirty horses laden with tea, silk and lace at Dartford. There was a fight, but the stuff was captured.

Deal was a great smuggling place, and in 1784 Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, was persuaded into doing rather a brutal and unnecessary thing in order to check the practice. A regiment of soldiers was brought to Deal on the day after a storm when all the smuggling luggers were drawn high and dry upon the beach, and with loaded muskets kept back the crowd whilst every boat was burned. I almost wonder that the Deal people cheered Mr. Pitt as they did twenty years later when he held a review of the Deal luggers which had been armed and fitted up as fighting vessels against the French.

Radford’s gang infested the country about Goudhurst and are believed to be the originals of the chief characters in G. P. R. James’s “ Smugglers,” which, of course, you have read. But the most famous gang was the Hawkhurst gang who flourished about 1747, and who simply defied the authorities. They were so famous that they were hired by the Dorsetshire smugglers to make a daring attack upon the Custom House at Poole, from which they took two tons of tea and 39 casks of spirits, and murdered two men whom they suspected to be informers, for which seven of them were executed at Chichester. They afterwards had a regular fight with a body of law-abiding people who called themselves the “ Goudhurst Band of Militia “ and were beaten. When captured their captain, Kingsmill, and half-a-dozen others were executed.

If the smugglers had stuck to their calling people would not have been so bitter against them, but they were also highwaymen and housebreakers.

In the “ Gentleman’s Magazine “ for 1745 I read :—

"At Folkestone a body of smugglers enter’d the house of Mr. Jordan, a custom house officer, arm’d with carbines and pistols, destroy’d his goods, and carry’d off his plate, but one of them, who had ruffles, was shot dead.”

"At an ale-house at Grinsted Green, Kent (Greenstreet Green, near Farnborough ?) a gang of twelve or fourteen

g 2 smugglers assaulted three custom house officers, wounded them in a barbarous manner and robb’d them of their watches, money and other things of value.”

"Some smugglers enter’d the house of a farmer near Sheerness and plunder’d it of 1,500 pounds of wool.”

I could tell you a lot more stories about Kentish smuggling, but I have not the space. However, you should know why men smuggled. In those days there were heavy duties upon all foreign wine, spirits, lace and tobacco, and especially on tea until 1784, when windows were taxed instead. Every man who sold tea or coffee was bound to have the fact painted over his door under a penalty of £200; sellers of spirits had to do the same under a penalty of £50; all Lace goods had to bear the Government stamp as a proof that duty had been paid upon them, and imitation of this stamp was punished by a fine of £200. So with tobacco. Hence the prices of these goods were so heavy that men who could smuggle them into the country and sell them at a fair price made money very quickly. At the end of the last century tea was twelve shillings a pound—and this after much of the duty had been taken off and put upon windows. So that when old ladies went out to tea it was always understood that they should bring their own tea with them.

The iron industry of our neighbour, Sussex, was very active during the reign of George the Third. In Kent there was only one famous furnace. This was at Lamberhurst, and was called the “ Gloucester.” Here, it is not generally known, were cast the splendid iron railings round St. Paul’s Cathedral, at the cost of sixpence a pound, the total cost being £11,200. There were also foundries at Horsmonden and Hawkhurst. A memory of the former still lingers in the name of the Gun Inn. The foundry at the latter place belonged to John Penn, the great Quaker, so that it was pretty old. There was also a gun factory at Barden, near Speldhurst. But by the end of the century this industry had almost entirely left Kent and Sussex for the north, where coal was abundant and iron, of course, could be made at much less cost than the destruction of forests. In 1796 there were one hundred and four furnaces in England, none in Kent, and only one in Sussex—the Ashburnham, which kept on until 1825.

George IV—1820-1830.

•So late as 1828 Penenden Heath was regarded as the natural place of public assembly for Kentishmen. Llere were held great meetings about the Catholic Emancipation Act—that is, an Act of Parliament by which for the first time in Protestant English history Roman Catholics were to be placed on exactly the same footing as Protestants; and also upon the great question of the reform of the system of electing members to Parliament. Here, too, originated the phrase “ Kentish Fire,” as applied to vigorous hand clapping.

The meeting of 1828 was to petition Parliament that "the Protestant Constitution of the United Kingdom might be preserved entire and inviolate “—which meant that Kent men had not yet learned to regard Roman Catholics as fit to be trusted. The petition was carried by a large majority of the, so it is said, 60,000 people present.

William IV—1830-1837.

During this reign the great Reform Bill of 1832 was passed. As regards Kent, we may note that Hythe, a town of 2,300 inhabitants, which had until now returned two members to Parliament, was only allowed to send one; and that Queenborough, with 800 inhabitants, and New Romney, which had dwindled to a town of 850 people, were no longer allowed to send members to Parliament.

Victoria.

Did you ever hear of the Battle of Bosenden ? No ? Well, the Battle of Bosenden may be considered the last battle fought upon English ground. It w.as in 1832, in the early days of the Reform Bill, that there came a visitor to Canterbury with long, flowing hair, armed with sword and pistols, who called himself Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta. He tried to get into Parliament, but although several very influential people voted for him, he failed. We next hear of him tried for perjury—that is, for breaking his solemn oath as a witness in a court of justice. He was committed to Maidstone gaol, but as it was clear that he was not quite right in his mind he was changed to Banning Asylum, where he remained four

years.

Released from Banning he started his career as a reformer, promised the rustics all sorts of things, and became quite popular amongst them. Then he became a prophet and a religious teacher, and succeeded so well that by degrees he gathered round him a devoted band of followers who believed all the rubbish he taught, and were ready to go anywhere and do anything for him. He then occupied Bosenden farm.

On May 27th, 1838, Courtenay preached a fiery sermon before a large congregation on Boughton Hill, and afterwards led processions through the surrounding villages with a loaf of bread on a pole as his standard—the idea of which was that the people were being robbed and starved, and that it was his mission to save them.

The magistrates now thought it was time to interfere and issued a warrant for his arrest as a disturber of the public peace, and a constable named Mears was sent to Boughton farm to take him into custody. Courtenay saw* Mears coming and shot him. Thereupon a regular war was declared between his followers and the authorities, and he encamped in Bosenden woods. Matters had become serious, so a hundred soldiers were sent from Canterbury in command of Lieutenant Bennett. Courtenay was ready for them with about a hundred followers armed with sticks, forks, scythes, and so forth.

Lieutenant Bennett stepped forward and summoned Courtenay to surrender. Courtenay shot him. The soldiers fired and killed Courtenay. Then Courtenay’s men attacked the soldiers furiously, and there was a long, fierce struggle, which lasted from twelve till seven o’clock. The end of it was that eight of Courtenay’s men were killed and seven wounded, whilst the soldiers had two men killed and six wounded—a total of ten men killed and thirteen wounded —not a long list for a battle, and yet, it may surprise you to hear, longer than the list of many of the pitched battles between the great captains of the Middle Ages.

Courtenay was really a Cornish man named Thom, from Truro.

With the Battle of Bosenden I close my little history of Kent. I might have said a great deal more about almost every period, but that more you can read for yourselves in bigger and more learned books than mine, and I only intend what I have written to help you as a sort of stepping stone to what others have written more lengthily and more learnedly. If, after having read or having had read to you this book you feel a longing to know more about our grand old county, if it thrills you with a pride which, from no fault of yours, you have never felt before, then my aim will have been accomplished.

APPENDIX.

A—ROYAL KENT.

To support my claim that Kent should be considered the Royal County of England I subjoin a list—not at all complete, but sufficiently so for my purposes—of Kentish places associated with Royalty.

I am quite willing to cut it out of any future edition if anybody can give me as long and varied a list of associations of Royalty with any other English county, except, of course, Middlesex.

At Greenwich there was probably a palace of Edward the First. At any rate, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, fourth son of King Henry the Fourth, built a palace here which he called Placentia, or the Pleasaunce.

Edward IV. enlarged and improved it. Henry VII. kept his court here and the Christmas of 1492. Henry VIII. was born here and favoured it much. He married

Katharine of Arragon, Anne Boleyn, and Anne of Cleves here. His youngest sister, Princess Mary Tudor, was married to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in Greenwich.

Elizabeth—Born at Greenwich. Went “ Maying in the green glades at Lewisham.” (Perhaps it was on this occasion that, passing very early through Lewisham before the people were up, she is said to have called it “long, lazy, lowsy Lewisham.”)

Entertained the lady ambassadress from France here. Bade farewell to her naval heroes here. As Frobisher’s squadron of three vessels, the united tonnage of which was under seventy, passed the palace on their way to discover the North-West Passage the queen bade them farewell by waving her hand out of a window.

It was at Greenwich that happened the episode of Raleigh’s cloak.

Edward VI. was born and died here.

Mary was born here.

James I. was very fond of Greenwich, and hunted much in its park after his fashion.

Charles II. pulled down the old “ Placentia “ and began a new one, but had no money to go on with it.

Mary, wife of William of Orange, was received at Greenwich Palace. She founded the hospital, but did not endow it—that is, provide it with money. She kept Charles the Second’s unfinished wing as a reception place for foreigners of distinction.

Miss Strickland in her “ Lives of the Queens of England “ says that the navy of England declined miserably for fifty years after the sovereigns ceased to live at Greenwich Palace.

ELTHAM.

Possibly the Anglo-Saxon kings had a palace here.

Henry III. kept Christmas here, 1’270, and this is the first we hear about it after the fighting Bishop Beck of Durham built it.

Edwaed III. held parliaments here, and entertained here after the battle of Poictiers his prisoner, King John of France.

Richard II. liked Eltham much and entertained here royally.

Henry IV. kept Christmas, 1405, here.

Henry’ VI. lived here.

Edward IV. built the parts now standing—the hall and the bridge.

Henry VII. preferred Greenwich, but his children were educated here.

Henry* VIII. kept two Christmases here. Elizabeth used to come here as a child.

James I. was the last sovereign who visited Eltham. This was in 1612.

(For most of the foregoing particulars I am indebted to Black’s Guide Book to Kent).

blackheath.

We may safely say that every one of our kings and queens has passed over Blackheath on the way to or from Dover, as well as every foreign sovereign or person of distinction who has visited our land up to the mail coach era.

Henry V. was greeted here on his return home from Agincourt in 1415 by the Lord Mayor and citizens of London.

It was on Blackheath that Henry VIII. had the first sight of Anne of Cleves, and a very magnificent affair the ceremony was. You ma}’ read a full account of it in Miss Strickland’s “ Lives of the Queens of England,’’ under “Anne of Cleves.”

On Blackheath Charles II. was greeted on his restoration.

c.vnterbcry

Was, as I have told you, the residence of the Kings of Kent from verv early times, but to make up for its ancient popularity with our” rulers, until this present year of grace, 1894, no royal personage had entered the city for more than fifty years.

Henry I. kept his court here.

Richard I. received here the homage of William, King of Scotland.

John kept the Christmas of 1204 here.

Henry III. married Eleanor of Provence here and kept the Christmas of 1263.

Edward I. was married here to Margaret of France, 1299.

Edward the Black Prince was married to the Fair Maid of Kent here, and was buried here. _

Henry IV. and his queen, Joanne of Navarre, were buried here.

Henry of Richmond, afterwards Henry VIL, married Elizabeth of York here. _

Henry VIII. was entertained here with Charles V. ot Spain.

{empty}A.n*ne” or Cleves was met here on her road from the coast by the Archbishop and many gentlemen and lodged at St. Augustine’s.

Elizabeth kept her court here 1573, during the Progress of which I have spoken, and coquettishly accompanied her suitor, the Duke of Anjou, as far when he was returning to France.

Charles I. was married to Henrietta Maria here.

Charles II. stayed here three nights on his restoration.

Mary, the wife of William of Orange, accompanied her husband to the coast on his way to Holland on one occasion. She arrived unexpectedly at Canterbury on her return journey and wanted the use of the largest house. This belonged to a lady who didn’t like her, and who, to avoid unpleasantness, locked up her house and went away. The next largest house was the Deanery, and Mary got there before even fires could be lighted. But Dean Hooper treated the queen so well that she, having noticed how shabby and dirty the cathedral altar hangings were, presented a fringed velvet, flowered with silver, valued at £500.

Amongst royal visitors to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket were Henry II., Henry III., Edward I., the queen of Edward II., Richard I., Richard II., Henry V.; Manuel, Emperor of the East; Sigismund, Emperor of the West—that is, of the eastern and western divisions of the Roman Empire, about 1216; Henry VIII. and Charles V. of Spain.

Sandwich and Margate were favourite ports whence our sovereigns embarked for and landed from the continent. Our armies and navies almost always departed from Kentish ports before Portsmouth and Plymouth attained importance. The Pvoyal list of Dover is, of course, a long one, and the towns on the road to London— Sittingbourne ami Rochester—were regular halting places of great people. It was the rule for distinguished travellers to furbish themselves up a bit before they made their final entry into the capital, and this they seem to have performed at an inn standing on the site of the present Bricklayers’ Arms in the Old Kent Road. At any rate, a framed placard in the bar of the modern publicdiouse sets forth a goodly list of distinguished visitors.

B.—THE CINQUE PORTS.

Although the name was used soon after the Norman Conquest it first appears in general use in the reign of John. The original Cinque Ports were Dover, Hythe, Romney, Sandwich, and Hastings. To these were added in 1220, in the reign of Henry III., two “ nobiliora membra”—chief “limbs”—Winchelsea and Rye. Hence the old rhyme :

“Has. Dov. Sea. Hv. Sand. Rum. Win. Rye.”

Each of these five ports had “ limbs “ thus :—

The limbs of Hastings were Pevensey, Seaford, Bulverhithe, Bekesbourne and Grange, near Gillingham.

The limbs of New Romney were Broomhill, Lydd, Old Romney, Dengemarsh and Oswardstone, near Lydd.

The limb of Hythe was West Hythe.

The limbs of Dover were Folkestone, Faversham, Margate, St. John’s, Goresend, Woodchurch, St. Peter’s, Kingsdown and Ringwould.

The limbs of Sandwich were Fordwich (then a town, with its mayor, jurats, and freemen), Deal, Waliner, Ramsgate, Sarre, Stonar and Brightlingsea in Essex.

The limb of Rye was Tenterden.

Even in 1893 Brightlingsea in Essex was reminded by the election at Sandwich of a deputy that it was still a limb of Sandwich. This connection has existed since the reign of Henry VII., Brightlingsea being bound to pay £5 and an annual contribution of ten shillings to the support of the Cinque Ports navy.

Yarmouth, too, was connected with the Cinque Ports, and during the great herring fair which lasted from Michaelmas to Martinmas the Cinque Ports used to send their bailiffs to keep order, and these men, behaving in an overbearing and interfering manner, created an ill feeling between Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports which actually resulted more than once in fights at sea, during one of which twenty-five ships were burned.

So long ago as the days of Edward the Confessor the Cinque Ports had their special privileges which William the Conqueror, and later, Charles the Second, confirmed.

These privileges were :

Men of Kent entrusted with the coast defence were only taxed one-third of the amount demanded from people living in the inland

They sent burgesses to Parliament, called barons. A word used in this case as meaning “ free men “—” burgesses.”

It is the ri<dit of the Cinque Ports barons to hold the canopy over kings and queens at their coronation. This rule has only been broken once—at the coronation of James the First, when the canopy was held by eight gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.

Thirtv-two barons usually took part in the ceremony—if a king and queen were crowned together there were two canopies with four barons to each staff. The barons of Hastings had one cloth with bells and staves, and after the ceremony gave it to the church of Saint Richard at Chichester. I don’t know of any church by this name in Chichester, but close to the cathedral there is St. mch.”rd Walk, and in the cathedral there is St. Richard s tomb ™<1 St Richard’s porch, so that there was probably a chapel of St. RTchardbefore The pulpit cloth of St. Clement’s Church Hastings, used to be the coronation canopy ot ueorge I

The barons of Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich held the oilrcloth” and gave it to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, dividing the staves and bells amongst themselves

T eu the Cinque Ports barons had the right of dining at the

11 ln„ banouet at the uppermost table on the king’s right hana. C°T°hey Tere fXom allsubsidies-that is, loans and taxes for the <4nnr>ort of the national army. „’,,.., T, Tut thev made an ample return for all this, inasmuch, as I have told vou before, during many centuries their navy was the roya

vv of England. Thus, in the time of Edward the First they had “o furnish fifty-seven ships every time the king crossed the channel. Each ship had twenty armed soldiers who had to serve fifteen days, and the total contribution was fifty-seven ships, eleven hundred and eighty-seven men, and fifty-seven “garcions” or boys. Dover made the largest contribution and Winchelsea the next, whilst we read that such places as Bulverhithe, Pevensey, Bekesbourne and Fordwich had to contribute.

The ancient court of the Cinque Ports, called the “ Guestling,” was first held at Shepway, or Shipway, Cross—an open space where four roads meet on the top of the hills between Westenhanger and L3*mpne—by order of Henry III. Here the Lord Warden— descendant of the ancient Count of the Saxon Shore—was sworn in, and here Mere heard cases of treason, falsifying money, services withdrawn—that is, shirked—false judgment and the finding of treasure. After the Revolution of 1688 the Court of Shepway was held on Bredenstone Hill at the south-west side of Dover.

In Domesday Book Sandwich, Dover and Romney are spoken of {empty}a.s privileged ports, but I don’t think anybody knows how long ago they were first privileged. In Saxon times the free men of the Cinque Ports ranked as nobles, aud before our English Parliament was divided into two Houses of Lords aud Commons the names of the peeis of the realm and of the Cinque Ports barons were called on a separate day from those of the burgesses, citizens, and knights.

Their summons to Parliament was not the ordinary summons. The oath of fidelity to the crown was that they would maintain and defend to the utmost power “the liberties, franchises, privileges, and customs of the Cinque Ports and their members.”

C—TRAVELLING IN KENT.

I fear that our county had a bad name amongst travellers both by land and sea in the old days.

In the reign of Henry VIII. the roads of the Weald were so bad that in 1523 was passed the first known Act of Parliament for the repair and regulation of roads.

In Shakespeare’s play of the second p.art of “ King Henry the Sixth “ Lord Say, of Knole Park, Sevenoaks, who has been taken prisoner byJack Cade and his rebels, is asked by Dick the Butcher what he had to say about Kent. To which he replied in Latin, "Bona terra, mala gens,” meaning, a fine country inhabited by bad people, although he then says :—

” Kent, in the commentaries Cæsar writ, Is termed the civil’st place of all this isle : Sweet is the country, because full of riches, The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy.”

But this little bit of flattery didn’t save Lord Say’s head. Then a poet named Taylor writes :—

” So are most thieves in Christendome and Kent.”

Yes. There were land sharks and sea sharks in plenty. The great roads were infested with highwaymen—especially the Dover road on Blackheath and near Rochester and where it runs over Barham Downs, and the fashionable Tunbridge Wells road between Farnborough and Sevenoaks. Blackheath and Shooters Hill were always dotted with gibbets bearing the bodies of the cowardly rascals whom so many foolish people speak of as romantic heroes, and the old Brockley Jack, so named it is said from Jack Cade, near Forest Hill, was a famous resort of the Blackheath robbers.

But this was not the only kind of robber to whom the Kentish traveller was exposed until not so very many years ago.

Just listen to what the great novelist Smollett wrote in the year 1763 about the Dover road and Dover :

"I need not tell you that this is the worst road in England with respect to the conveniences of travelling, and must certainly impress foreigners with an unfavourable opinion of the nation in general. The chambers are in general cold and comfortless, the beds paltry, the cookery execrable, the wine poison, the attendance bad, the publicans insolent, and the bills extortion; there is not a drop of tolerable malt liquor to be had from London to Dover.

"Every landlord and every waiter harangued upon the knavery of a publican in Canterbury who had charged the French ambassador forty pounds for a supper which was not worth forty shillings but when they produced their own bills they appeared to be all of the same famity and complexion.

"Dover is commonly termed a den of thieves, and I am afraid it is not altogether without reason that it has acquired this appellation. The people are said to live by piracy in time of war, and by smuggling and fleecing strangers in time of peace. Without all doubt a man cannot be worse lodged and worse treated in any part of Europe; nor will he in any other place meet with more flagrant instances of fraud, imposition, and brutality. One would imagine they had formed a general conspiracy against all those who either go to or return from the continent.”

Then Smollett describes how he was robbed and insulted by the boatmen, and even by the master of the vessel which was to take him to France.

You who are familiar with the smart, comfortable steamers which carry you over to France in a little more than an hour will be interested in a description of the sort of vessel you would have had to go by a hundred and thirty years ago.

"We found ourselves in a most wretched hovel, on board what is called a Folkestone cutter. The cabin was so small that a dog could hardly turn in it, and the beds put me in mind of the holes described in some catacombs in which the bodies of the dead were deposited, being thrust in with the feet foremost. There was no getting into them but endways, and indeed they seemed so dirty that nothing but extreme necessity could have obliged me to use them. We sat up all night in a most uncomfortable position, tossed about by the sea, cramped, weary and languishing for want of sleep.”

This lasted from six one evening till three the next morning, and then, instead of stepping ashore at once, the passengers had to row three miles in a small open boat. The fare was five gnineas, besides “tips “to everybody who performed the smallest service, from the captain downwards.

There is one poor consolation—the travellers were even worse treated and more robbed on the French side than in Kent.

The experiences of Fielding, the novelist, ten years previously, when the ship in which he sailed from London to Lisbon lay off Deal, are of the same character. The prices asked by the Deal people who came off to the ship for boat hire and for provisions were so exorbitant that Fielding asked the captain of a man of war to put him ashore, which was refused.

Wrecking—that is, the plundering of shipwrecked vessels—was largely carried on by Deal people. Daniel Defoe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe,” wrote very strongly about it in his account of the storm of 1703.Speaking of some poor wretches cast upon the GoodwinSands, he says :—

"Some boats are said to have come very near them in quest of booty and in search of plunder, and to carry oft’what they could get, but nobody troubled themselves for the lives of these miserable creatures.”

And in a poem on the same subject he writes fiercely and pathetically about the brutality of these sea sharks.

Lord Byron in “ Don Juan “ says about Dover :

’ Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties To those who upon land and water dwell; And, last not least, to strangers uninstructed, Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.”

Even after the establishment of mail coaches the by-roads of Kent and Sussex were famous for their-badness, and are not now at the present day proper objects for pride in wet weather. Hasted, our Kentish historian, wrote at the end of the last century :

"The roads of these parts are hardly passable after any rain, being so miry that the traveller’s horse frequently plunges through them up to the girths of the saddle, and the waggons sink so deep in the ruts as to slide along on the nave of the wheels and the axle of them.”

At the beginning of the present century it was reported that the cross roads of the Weald of Kent were the worst in the country.

D.—FAMOUS KENT MEN.

Kent has contributed her fair share to the famous men of our country, and if no giant stands out like a Warwickshire Shakespeare, or a Shropshire Clive, or a Lincolnshire Newton, Kent men have been found well to the fore wherever the race has been to the swift and the battle to the strong.

This is particularly remarkable in literature. I have shown how Chaucer, if not Kentish by birth, has fair claims to be considered Kentish by adoption John Gower, the greatest English scholar of his day, although only one of the three poems by which he is best known is in English, was an esquire of Kent. Caxton, the father of English printing, “ was of Kent, in the Weald, where is spoken as broad and rude English as any in England.”

Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, the author of “ Ferrex and Porrex,” our first regular drama, and of the “ Mirror for Magistrates” was a Sevenoaks man. Kit Marlowe; Lyly the “Euphuist;” Sir Henry Wotton, poet, statesman and man of letters; Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allington, the admirer of Anne Boleyn; Lovelace, the cavalier singer; and Sir Philip Sidney were Kent men.

Fletcher, the dramatist, who wrote in partnership with Beaumont, was a Cranbrook man; and Baker, whose chronicle is so valuable to historical students, belonged to Sissinghurst. Christopher Smart, the poet, was a Kent man.

The courtly Lord Chesterfield, author of the famous “ Letters to his son; “ and the Rev. Johu Barham, better known as Ingoldsby, were Kent men.

Charles Dickens was Kentish to the core, for many of his famous pages tell of Kent—and, curiously enough, his first and his last works, “Pickwick” and “Edwin Drood.” In “ David Copperfield” he deals largely with our county; in “Great Expectations” entirely. So j*ou may see the house where he lived and died at Gads Hill, and the house he lived in at Broadstairs, and Satis House at Rochester, and Cooling churchyard, whence Pip in “ Great Expectations “ used to look over the dreary marshes; and I daresay you can pick out Agnes Wickfield’s house at Canterbury. Rochester has many spots associated with him, and I have myself no doubt that the road along which Mr. Pickwick undertook to drive, and Mr. Winkle to ride, was that which runs between Rochester and Maidstone; that the cricket match between All Muggleton and Dingley Dell was played in the same neighbourhood; whilst we know very well that Mr. Tupman’s “ Leather Bottel” is still in Cobham village.

Two very famous soldiers at leant were Kent men—Sir Philip Sidney, of Penshurst; and General Wolfe, of VVesterham. Sir Sidney Smith, the gallant defender of St. John d’Acre in 1799 against Bonaparte was, I believe, Kent born—at any rate, he was educated at Tonbridge school.

The unfortunate Admiral Byng was a Kent man, and so was Sir George Rooke, who captured Gibraltar in 1704.

In “science Linacre, the botanist and first president of the Royal College of Physicians; and Harvey, discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were Kent men.

Amongst politicians we can claim Sir George Poynings, Lord Deputy Tn Ireland, under Henry VIL, the author of “ Poyning’s Law “ or the “ Statute of Drogheda,” which made the Irish Parliament absolutely dependent on that of England; and the ill-fated, heroic Algernon Sidney. The great Earl of Chatham lived at Hayes, and here was born his even more famous son, William Pitt.