lit 



K It'HTS. 



<<WM of Winchelsea and Rye, lying on the Sussex coast, between 

 Halting* and Romney. To each of then seven municipal towns, 

 mnptVfavch-W, were attached one or more subordinate ports or 

 town*, denominated mrmbtn of the principal port. The following U a 

 lilt of the Cinque Porte, and the two ancient towns, with their 

 dependent members, at they stood at the commencement of the 19th 

 century: 



DITACBXD afnrsirai. 



1. CorpormU) town of Perenaejr ; distant 11 mile* from Hastings. 



1. OorponU town of Scaford ; dUUnt 11 miles. 



I. Part of Beihlll pariah, U Pevensejr Marsh ; dUUnt 8 miles, 



4. Small part of St. Leonard'! parish, near Winchelaea ; distant 



Oia, 



5. Brakbourne pariah, near Canterbury ; distant 48 milet. 



.(. VIII of Grange, or Grench, near Rochester ; distant JO miles. 

 Wincheltea. 

 lire. 1. Corporal* town of Tenterden ; distant 10 mile*. 



l'..i. -. 



:. !.! f, 

 Hjrtbe. 



IJoTtr. 



11. Corporal* town of Lydd ; distant J mile.. 

 2. Denge-marsh ; distant i miles. 

 J. Orlestone; distant 10 miles. 



1. Corporate town of Folkestone ; distant 7 miles. 



2. Corporate town of Faversham ; distant 26 mile*. 



S. Parish of St. John, containing the town of Margate ; distant 

 SI mile*. 



4. Parish of St. Peter ; distant 19 miles. 



5. Parish of Blrchington ; distant 20 miles. 



6. Parish of Ringwould ; distant S miles. 



'1. Corporate town of Fordwlch ; distant 10 mile*. 

 2. Corporate town of Deal : distant 6 miles. 

 I. VU1 of Kamsgate, including the town of that name ; distant 

 Sandwich. ( 4 miles. 



4. Till of Sarr ; distant S miles. 



5. Parish of Walmer; distant 8 miles. 



t 6. Pariah of Brightlingsea in Essex ; distant 40 miles. 



It U probable that in very early times all the members were in some 

 measure dependent on, or subject to, their respective ports ; but in 

 latter times there wag no connexion between any port and such of its 

 members as have been incorporated, beyond that which exists among 

 all the ports, excepting only the connexion between Sandwich and 

 Deal. Each incorporated member had within ita liberty the same 

 independent jurisdiction and municipal functions as the port itself. 

 The unincorporated members remained under the municipal jurisdic- 

 tion of their respective ports ; they were within the jurisdiction of the 

 criminal and civil court**, and of the magistrates and coroners of those 

 ports; they were summoned on the juries, and contributed to the 

 rates, in the nature of county rates, imposed by the justices of those 

 ports. Yet none of the municipal franchises could be acquired in 

 these members, nor had they any share in electing any of the officers 

 of their respective ports ; residence within them was not considered 

 for any corporate purpose, as residence within the port. The relation 

 between Sandwich and Deal was peculiar. Deal was incorporated by 

 William III., before which time it was exclusively under the jurisdic- 

 tion of Sandwich. William's charter gave Deal a jurisdiction of its 

 own ; but as it did not interfere with the original jurisdiction of Sand 

 wich, the latter retained a concurrent jurisdiction in Deal 



The internal constitution of each port, as well as the Norman deno- 

 minations ul jurat* and baroiu, which, in lieu of aldermen and freemen 

 have constantly prevailed in them all since the time of William I. 

 concur to show the solidity of his plan for rendering this maritime line 

 one of the grand outworks of the Conquest. The earliest members o 

 the municipal bodies established under these foreign denominations 

 at a time when the English municipalities in general were subjectec 

 tti the most rigorous enslavement, wore doubtless trading settlers from 

 William's Continental dominions : and the term bantu, as applied to 

 the Cinque Ports' representatives, which in the later periods of English 

 parliamentary history has usually been considered as simply synony 

 mous with bttryetta, did, before the several elements of the Commons 

 House coalesced into one homogeneous body, imply a political as wel 

 as a municipal superiority. 



Until the time of Henry VII. the crown appears to have had n< 

 |iennanent navy : the Cinque Ports constantly furnished nearly all th 

 chipping required for the purposes of the state, and their assistance U 

 the king's ships continued long after that time. When ships were 

 wanted, the king issued his summons to the Porte to provide their 

 quota. In the time of Edward I. the number they were bound U 

 provide was fifty -seven, fully equipped, at their own cost : the pcrioc 

 of gratuitous service was limited to fifteen days. The summons i 

 Edward III.'s time seems to have apportioned the ships among th 

 ports and their members : some of the members had to provide on 

 hip ; and in some eases two members had to provide one betwee 

 tbfin. It U in consideration for these service* that, in the preambles 

 of the existing charters, the peculiar privileges and exemptions of th 

 lrU are sUted to have been granted. These towns, owing to variout 

 causes, have long since lost their ancient importance. The pliy.-ir. 

 changes that have taken place in the course of ages upon the coast-lin 

 may have had some effect. Rye and Itomney, once standing on th 



shore, are now at some distance from it Sandwich is only accessible 

 or small vessels ; and Folkestone, one of the members of Do ver, has only 

 recently had ite importance restored by becoming a station and port in 

 connection with the South Eastern Railway. But the complete organi- 

 sation of a permanent navy involved the extinction of that descr. 

 f service on the part of these ports, in consideration of which their 

 privileges were avowedly granted ; and their inferiority aa ports, and 



heir distance from all the great seats of Kngliah manufacture* 

 ciently account for their present commercial insignificance. 



Each of the five original ports returned two barma to parliament, 

 ax early as the 18th of Edward I.; Seaford, a corporate menr 

 lastings, sent as early as the 26th of the same reign; and the tv... 

 ancient towns, Rye and W'inchelsea, sent as early as the 42nd of 

 Idward III. The peculiar nature of the relation between the Cinque 

 'ort and the crown must have given the hitter, from the commence- 

 ment, a very powerful influence in their internal transactions ; and, in 

 ater times, when the parliamentary relations of the municipal towns 

 came to be the grand object of solicitude to the royal prerogative, 

 hese municipalities imbibed an ample share of the prevalent municipal 

 is well as political corruption. In the 20th of Charles II. the first 

 jpen blow was struck by the crown at the liberties of the Port* in 

 ;eneral, in the provision of Charles's charter of that year, l.y which 

 he elections of all their recorders and common clerks were made sub- 

 ect to the royal approbation. Subsequently, in 1686, all the general 

 charters of the Porte, and most of the particular charters of each 

 ndividual town, were, by the king's special command, delivered up to 

 "olonel Strode, then constable of Dover Castle, and were n<-v< i 

 wards recovered. 



The lord-warden U the general returning officer for all the ports, the 

 write at every general election being directed to him in the same man- 

 ner as to sheriffs of counties, whereupon he issues his precept for the 

 election to the proper officer of each port Before the Revolution of 

 1688 the lord-wardens assumed the power and the right of nominating 

 one, and sometimes both, of the members for each of the port-towns 

 laving parliamentary representation ; but this practice was terminated 

 )y an Act passed in the first year after the Revolution, entitled An 

 Act to declare the Right and Freedom of Election of Members to serve 

 in Parliament for the Cinque Porte.' The necessity for such an enact- 

 ment proves how firmly the practice must have been established ; but 

 although this statute had the effect of taking away the privilege from 

 the lord-warden, the result was, that the Treasury influence was 

 enabled to return both members. The admittance of persons to the 

 rreedom of the ports became more and more restricted, till in most 

 cases the right was almost solely vested in the corporations, and the 

 corporations became family parties ; corruption and bribery were estab- 

 lished customs; and the freedom of a Cinque Port town was always 

 considered as entitling ite possessor to a provision of some 

 Repeated attempts were made, by trials in courte of law, and by 

 election petitions to the House of Commons, to effect a reform in the 

 representation ; but though successful in one or two individual cases, 

 there was no lasting improvement until the whole was effectively 

 altered by the Reform Bill in 1832, and still further by the Municipal 

 Reform Bill of 1835. 



For all purposes except one or two, each corporate town of the ports 

 possessed all the jurisdiction and arrangements of a separate county, 

 and the circuit judges held no assizes within their liberties; each town, 

 too, had ite distinct rate in the nature and for the purposes of a county 

 rate, and ite civil court of record ; and most of the duties analogous to 

 those of a sheriff of a county at Urge were exercised separately and 

 exclusively in each of the port towns. According to the originally 

 uniform Norman constitution of the ports, the number of jurats in 

 each corporation ought always to have been twelve, besides the presiding 

 officer, each of whom was, ex ojfcio, a judge both of the civil and 

 criminal court The mayor or bailiff, and two other jurats, consti- 

 tuted a quorum. It became, however, the practice in most of these 

 towns to keep the number of jurat* as low as possible, scarcely ever 

 exceeding four or five. From the body of jurat* in each port, or 

 corporate member, the mayor or bailiff was elected, who frequently 

 continued to hold the office for life or for a long period ; and when the 

 continuous holding was forbidden by the 9 Anne, cap. 20, the Act was 

 evaded by two persons agreeing to hold the office in alternate years, or 

 by appointing some mere dependent. 



The jurisdiction of the Cinque Ports collectively extends along the 

 coast, continuously, from Birchington, which in west of Margate, to 

 Seaford in Sussex. But several of the corporate members are quite 

 inland. Tenterden, in the centre of a rich agricultural district, has 

 not even a river near it Many of the Bni&corpor 

 not only inland, but situated at great distances from their respective 

 ports, some as far as forty to fifty miles. All the unincorporated mem- 

 bers being exclusively un<l ' the Jurisdiction of their own ports, each 

 of those members was obliged to have recourse to the justices and 

 of ite own port Great inconvenience was expcricncwl frum 

 this state of things, especially in those towns where the distance from 

 the principal port was considerable. 



The Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832 worked a considerable 

 revolution in the political relations of the Cinque Porte. From three 

 of the towns, Seaford, Winchelsea, and Romney, the right of returning 

 members of parliament was wholly withdrawn ; Rye and Hythe were 



