EBBSFLEET AND RICHBOROUGH.

35

low land between these points which has been so much altered. The so-called "Wantsome," or the water-passage between Reculver and Pegwell Bay, which made Thanet an island, has been closed; and the coast-line at the eastern entrance of the Wantsome (that toward the Downs) has been considerably advanced. This advance, or "silting up," was very gradual. The whole of this low shore offered itself, more or less, as a natural landing-place; and as one point of it became inaccessible, another was chosen. The great Roman haven here was that of Richborough, or Rutupiæ, whose ancient ivy-hung walls-raised, it may be, in the days of the great Stilicho*-mark themselves against the low horizon between Sandwich and Ebbsfleet-the landing-place which grew into favour as the haven of Rutupiæ became more difficult of approach. The position of Ebbsfleet is indicated by the long spit of land which runs down into the marshes a mile or two north of Richborough. Here, at the "stathe [or landing-place] that is called Ypwines fleot," in the words of the Saxon Chronicle, Hengist and Horsa disembarked from their "three long ships;" and here, a century and a half later (A.D. 507), St. Augustine landed with his companions, and, according to the Canterbury tradition, imprinted the mark of his foot on the first English rock which he touched. The "stathe" at Sandwich, farther south than Rutupiæ, rose into importance as that of Ebbsfleet closed; but it may be that the spot was not unknown as a harbour throughout the earlier days of Rutupiæ. It is clear that, even in Roman times, the Rutupine "road" had become in part converted into dry land; for the foundations of a small villa have been found close under the low cliff which once formed the seaward front of the fortress. The place is of very great interest in many ways. Its Roman walls, still so massive and so apparently indestructible, were raised, not merely to protect the harbour, but especially to repel the attacks of the Saxons, whose ships seem to have been constantly hovering off the coast. But Ebbsfleet, the recorded landing-place of the first Saxons who effected a permanent settlement, has for us an attraction even greater than the site or the remains of the Roman castrum. The scene has no marked features, though it is not without its own beauty; but we have here the very beginning of English history. Keel after keel, company after company of Teutonic colonisers must, after Hengist, have descended on this spit of land, and have taken possession of the high ground above it. The hill of Ozengall, above Ebbsfleet, is covered with the graves of the first settlers, dug into the chalk, and once covered with low mounds or barrows. They are all of the heathen period, and belong to the century and a half which extended between the landing of Hengist and that of St. Augustine.

Sandwich rose on the decline of the other ports; and in the time of Canute it is called "the most famous of all the harbours of England." It is the most ancient of the Cinque Ports, and all ports or creeks on the Kentish coast are "members" of it. It continued to exist as a great port until about the year 1500, when the haven began to silt up. In another century it was quite closed. Traffic had passed away. The town was slowly assuming the fossilised appearance which now makes it so remarkable, and the green

Stilicho was the last Roman general who put Britain into a state of defence, and these fortresses belong to the later Roman period.

The "fleot'-"floating-place," or harbour-of a certain Ypwine. 'Ypwines fleot" has been shortened into "Ebbsfleet." Ypwine may have been the name of one of the earlier Saxon leaders.

marshland had stretched itself into the shallow estuary: not perhaps so far as at present, but far enough to convert both Richborough and Ebbsfleet into inland places.

There is no town in England, not even among the quaintest old seaports, which can be said closely to resemble Sandwich. Where the sea has left other harbours, the towns

connected with them have either been abandoned or have quite changed their character, Sandwich alone has lingered on through the centuries, with little alteration or improvement. still much the same as in the days of the earlier Tudor, or even of the Plantagenet, kings. Time has only mouldered the several parts, if not into beauty, yet into such masses of quaint form and harmonious colouring as may well delight the visitor. Trees close up round parts of the walk which has been formed on the old walls, and here and there intrude on the deep fosse into which the round angle towers project themselves. Within the walls, the great tower of St. Clement's and the masses of other churches rise above the lower roofs. Great open spaces, gardens, and orchards lie here and there between the

houses, just as within some Flemish boulevard, and add their own beauty to the scene. Then, as we come on a venerable gateway, opening to a bridge which crosses the channel of the Stour, we pause to admire the strangely picturesque, yet most simple composition (if such an artist's word may be used) which lies before us: the roof, tinted with a yellowish lichen, of a small church, with a cross on one gable; the red, time-worn tiling of old houses below it; masses of broad-leaved trees beyond; and the still river, with the few vessels that even now can creep upward thus far, lying under the light of a sky flecked with white cloudlets. Nothing can exceed the almost sleepy calm and repose of the scene; yet we are here at the very gate of that famous harbour of Sandwich which Leo von Rotzmital, the Bohemian ambassador of 1446, describes as so full of wonder-the resort of ships of all sizes and from all parts of Europe. Green polders, on some of which old trees are growing, now represent this great harbour, the customs of which, within a few years after Von Rotzmital visited it, yielded annually £17,000. There have been few greater changes in any part of England.

Perhaps the best way for a stranger to get a tolerable notion of the general character of Sandwich will be to climb the low but massive Norman tower of St. Clement's Church. He will there see if he has not already discovered the fact by losing his way-that the town has no main street, and that the disposition of the irregular, narrow, and winding ways seems to have been left altogether to chance. The mass of houses is crushed together within the lines of the old walls, and the only landmarks are the church towers. The best evidence, indeed, of the ancient wealth and importance of Sandwich remains in its churches; of which the earliest is that of St. Clement, who was constantly chosen (partly perhaps from the story of his death, and from his device of an anchor) as the patron of seafarers. His church here is of considerable size, with a central tower, the lofty arches of which are much enriched with Norman zig-zags and grotesques.

In the thirteenth century the chancel was rebuilt, and in the fifteenth
the nave.
The church thus indicates, by its various changes, the
increasing prosperity of the town. A great guild of St. George had its
chantry here; and the pavement shows the matrices of many large and
rich brasses, memorials of wealthy merchants.

St. Peter's Church, now only a fragment, since the fall of its central tower destroyed the south aisle, is of the fourteenth century, and contains a very beautiful tomb, dating from the early years of Edward III. The canopy has rich open work of trefoils, the spandrils are diapered, and in front is a range of shields set in enriched quatrefoils. It is probably the monument of a St. Leger, at that time Warden of the Cinque Ports; but in spite of the shields BRACKET AT SANDWICH. of arms, it has not been appropriated with certainty. It is not

needful, however, to describe all the Sandwich churches. They all bear witness to the old importance of the place, and, at the same time, tell plainly enough how long since that importance has passed away. In this respect Sandwich more nearly resembles Wisby, in Gotland, than any other centre of bygone commerce with which it can be compared. But the prosperity of Wisby, as the character of its many churches proves, hardly lasted beyond the thirteenth century. Sandwich was a rich port until at least the beginning of the sixteenth. The old Custumal of Sandwich still exists; and it is curious to note that in many respects the regulations of the town were much the same as those which prevailed throughout the Hanse towns of the Baltic. Female criminals were drowned in the Guestling, a brook which falls into the Stour above the town. Stouter thieves were buried alive in the "thief downs," or "dunes," near the same stream. These, at least, are the provisions of the Custumal, first reduced to writing in 1301; and it may be supposed that they were not allowed to remain altogether idle. The Cinque Ports, it must be remembered, were essentially towns of sailors, and of fighting sailors. They fought not only with the king's enemies, but between themselves; and the feud between the sailors of the Cinque Ports and those of Yarmouth led, during the stay of Edward I. at Sluys, in 1297, to so

*It is printed in the "History of Sandwich," by William Boys, who died in 1803, and whose monument remains in St. Clement's Church; and in Jeakes's "Charters of the Cinque Ports."

OLD MEMORIES OF SANDWICH.

39

desperate an encounter between them, that twenty of the Yarmouth vessels were burned and their crews killed. Cinque Port ships did not scruple to plunder friendly merchantmen at sea; and the fierce and daring character which the men of these towns developed was hardly subdued by the severest ordinances of their Custumals.

Standing at the old water-gate of Sandwich, close to the Barbican, we look across the marshes, covering what was once the "Rutupine shore," to the walls of the Roman Rutupiæ, on their low cliffs, and beyond them to the gravel spit of Ebbsfleet, the place at which, as we have said, Hengist and Horsa are supposed to have disembarked. To untravelled Roman ears, the name of the "littus Rutupinum" suggested the delicate

"natives," ancestors of the Whitstable and Margate oysters of our own day, whose birthplace was at once recognised by such learned gastronomers as the Montanus of Juvenal:

Circeis nata forent, an

Lucrinum ad saxum, Rutupinove edita fundo

Ostrea, callebat primo deprendere morsu.'

To the legion stationed in the fortress the associations connected with it may have been hardly so agreeable. The fierce storms which swept along the coast are referred to by Lucan; and when, toward the end of the Roman period, the famous second legion, "Legio Secunda Augusta," was removed from Chester to Rutupiæ, the position had become one of considerable danger. What we now find at Rutupiæ are the three walls of the castrum, each about 460 feet in length, and varying in height from thirty to fifteen feet. Toward the sea, along the edge of the cliff, there was no wall: as was the case in other fortresses, similarly placed. The wall, which is of great thickness, is formed of layers of rough boulders, strongly cemented with mortar. Externally, it was cased with regular courses

"Sat." iv. 139. Shells of these British oysters, recognised by certain peculiarities, have been found in the "midden heaps" connected with some ancient villas in Italy.