found under the old bed of the river Rother. 63 



At whatever period this vessel may have sunk, there are 

 strong grounds for supposing that she was wrecked ; the loss 

 of mast, bowsprit, anchor, and cable, the wreck of the boat, 

 and the human bones found in and near her, are sufficient 

 proofs ; but what renders it still more convincing is a hole stove 

 through her bottom forward. And in the fire-place in the cabin 

 was found a conglomerated mass of cinders and charred wood, 

 which proves that the fire must have been extinguished sud- 

 denly, or the wood would have mouldered to ashes. Hence, 

 Sir, we may conclude that she was overwhelmed by some con- 

 vulsion of nature, from which circumstance, and the changes 

 that have taken place in the course of the river Rother, which 

 I shall presently show, we may yet arrive at the probable time 

 of her loss. 



By various historians it appears, that at a very early period 

 the river Rother, which takes its rise in the parish of Rother- 

 fkld in Sussex, emptied itself at New Romney, the Lemanis 

 of the ancients. At the period of the Norman conquest it is- 

 sued to sea between Romney and Lydd, at a manor now call- 

 ed North Lade (a Saxon word for an opening to the sea,) and 

 the trench which constituted the body of the river from the 

 Rother at Appledore to the sea at North Lade, through Rom- 

 ney Marsh, by the sea dike called the Rhee Wall, is now dis- 

 tinctly to be traced. This bed of the river was granted by 

 Queen Elizabeth to the corporation of Romney, and by that 

 body it was lately sold for the redemption of the land-tax. 



In the reign of Edward the First, about the year 1287, in 

 consequence of a dreadful storm, when the town of Winchel- 

 sea was destroyed by the rage of the sea, the mouth of the 

 Rother at Lydd was stopped, and the course of this river di- 

 verted into another and nearer track, by Appledore, into the 

 sea at Rye ; and by the flux and reflux of the sea, the old 

 channel became so swerved up that, about the time of Queen 

 Elizabeth,* it was scarcely navigable above Rye town for ves- 



* " Yet now it (Rye) beginneth to complain that the sea abandoneth it 

 (such is the variable and interchangeable course of the elements,) and in 

 part imputeth it, that the river Rother is not contained in its channel, and 

 so loseth its force to carry away the seas and beach, which the sea doth 

 inbear into the haven." — Hayley's Manuscript Collections relating to Sussex, 



