BRIDPORT HARBOUR. 185 



"' bee fitt to receive shipps and wherein shipps may ride with 

 " safty. Together with the ground and soyle adjoyning to the 

 " said burrough whereupon any peeres, walls or sluces have been 

 " or shalbee erected. To hold the same to them and their 

 " successors for ever, under the yearely rent of 6s. 8d. payable 

 " into the Excheqr. att Micha's yearely." 



(S.P. Dom. Chas. II. docquet. 24, 215.) 



It is noticeable that this grant mentions walls and piers 

 as if they had been already in existence ; if that was so, 

 they must have been built at a date between the reigns of 

 Elizabeth and Charles II., as it will be recollected that the 

 piracy commissioners of 1565 reported that there was then 

 no " harbour," and that vessels were hauled up on the shingle. 

 The phrasing is also remarkable in another respect, viz., in 

 the suggestion that either the old haven had been, or the new 

 one was to be, close to the town. In the absence of any cor- 

 roborative evidence that the proposed works of 1670 were 

 to be " at, in, or before " the borough, I am inclined to think 

 that the warrant was drawn by an official who naturally 

 assumed that Bridport was a town upon the coast. But I 

 may be quite wrong, and the words may mean what they 

 appear to imply, viz., that there was a serious intention to 

 form a port one mile or so inland from the sea. At all events 

 no proof is yet available to show that important steps of any 

 kind were taken in pursuance of this grant by Charles II. 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY HARBOUR. 



The undertaking next comes into the foreground at the 

 end of William III. 's reign (1701), when the governing body 

 decided to adhere no longer to the former policy of asking 

 for concessions from the Crown, and to strike out a new path 

 by applying for an Act which would establish their position. 

 There was in consequence some Parliamentary skirmishing 

 with respect to the petition by the Bailiffs for leave to bring 

 in a Bill to raise money for the haven, the mouth of which 

 had for some years past been choked by alterations of the tides, 



