921 



CINQUE PORTS. 



CIRCLE. 



922 



reduced to one each ; and Hastings, Dover, and Sandwich, still return 

 two each. In the several constituencies of these five remaining par- 

 liamentary boroughs, besides the important change effected by the 

 introduction of the household franchise, the new regulation of the 

 parliamentary boundaries made very material alterations. Hastings and 

 Dover have experienced the least change in this latter respect. In the 

 case of Hastings, the two nearest of the detached members have simply 

 been added to the " home liberty" of the port itself, as before existing; 

 and in that of Dover, the most populous part of one of the adjoining 

 parishes has been added to the immediate liberty of the port. But in 

 forming the new parliamentary borough of Rye, not only have the two 

 " ancient towns " of Rye 'and Winchelsea been thrown together, but 

 six surrounding agricultural parishes are also included within their 

 common boundary. In like manner, Folkestone, a corporate member 

 of Dover, is now joined with Hythe, and five adjacent agricultural 

 parishes, in composing the parliamentary borough of Hythe ; and to 

 the ancient home liberty of Sandwich are added, for parliamentary 

 purposes, the corporate town and parish of Deal, and the contiguous 

 parish of Walmer. 



The Municipal Reform Act has operated yet more decisively to break 

 up the ancient organisation of the ports, and assimilate their internal 

 arrangements to those of the improved English municipalities at large. 

 The details will be found under the heads of the respective towns in 

 the GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISION. 



The jurisdiction in capital cases, formerly possessed by the ports, is 

 abolished by the Act in common with all similar jurisdictions ; and as 

 regards the limits of the authority of the courts and magistrates of the 

 ports, provision is made by section 134 of the same Act. 



Anciently there were several courts, exercising a general jurisdiction 

 over all the ports and members. The Court of Shepway was the 

 supreme court of the Cinque Ports. The lord warden presided in it, 

 assisted by the mayors and bailiffs and a certain number of jurats 

 summoned from each corporate town. The following offences seem to 

 have been cognisable within the ports' jurisdiction by this court only : 

 treason, sedition, counterfeiting the king's coin or seal, and concealing 

 treasure found. It was also a court of appeal from the judgments of 

 the several local courts. This court has been so long obsolete that 

 even the site of it is now unknown, except that it was most probably 

 somewhere in that central part of the ports' jurisdiction about which 

 lies the division of the county of Kent, still denominated " the lathe of 

 Shepway." Two other ancient courts are still occasionally held, the 

 Court of Brotherhood and the Court of Guestling. The name of the 

 former seems to indicate its purpose to have been the regulating of the 

 affairs of the fraternity or association of the ports in general. The 

 latter court seems to have been only a modification of the former, 

 practised on certain occasions. The Court of Brotherhood is com- 

 posed of the mayors of the five ports and two ancient towns and a 

 certain number of jurats from each of them. The Court of Guestling 

 consists of the same persons, with the addition of the mayors and 

 bailiffs of all the corporate members, and a certain number of jurats 

 from each of them. It is thought that the bodies forming this addition 

 may originally have been merely invited by the Court of Brotherhood to 

 give their assistance, and that hence the assembly may have received 

 the name of Guestling. The chairman of the court is called the 

 speaker, and the office is filled in rotation by the mayors of the five 

 ports and two towns, each for one year. The speaker sends a letter 

 every year to each of the corporations composing the two several 

 courts, asking their opinion as to the expediency of holding either of 

 them ; and if a majority answer in the affirmative, the speaker con- 

 venes the court. One of the more important functions of the Court of 

 Brotherhood anciently was the appointment of the two bailiffs whom 

 the Cinque Ports had the privilege of sending to superintend their 

 affairs at Yarmouth in Norfolk, and the examination of the conduct of 

 those officers. The securing of certain facilities for carrying on the 

 fishery during the herring season, granted to them by charter, and 

 enforced by successive royal ordinances, seems to have been the mam 

 object of the residence of these officers of the ports at Yarmouth, 

 where also, together with the bailiff of that town, they had the keeping 

 of the peace and the care of the prison during the fair, with the power 

 of determining all disputes and complaints. As late as the reign of 

 Elizabeth we find traces of the contentions which were constantly 

 arising between the bailiff of Yarmouth and the bailiff of the Ports 

 rending there. In the Court of Brotherhood, also, the arrangements 

 and regulations were made as to the apportioning of the service of 

 ships to the crown. In these general courts, too, assessments were 

 made upon all the porte and members for defraying the general 

 expenses of the association ; and in them all disputes between any of 

 the ports, towns, or members were settled, and complaints of miscon- 

 duct in any of then- officers were inquired into and redressed. The 

 necessity for proceedings of this kind no longer exists ; and although 

 these courts have been occasionally held of late years, such holding 

 seems to have been mere matter of form, excepting only the Courts of 

 Brotherhood and Guestling held before each coronation, at which the 

 arrangements have been made respecting the privilege of the barons of 

 the port* to hold the canopy over the king's head on that occasion; 

 another mark of the pre-eminence among the municipalities ol 

 England given to these towns by the princes of the Norman line. 



It remains to notice more particularly the nature of the Lord 



Warden's jurisdiction as now exercised. One important branch of a 

 sheriff's jurisdiction is exercised by him over all the ports and mem- 

 bers namely, the execution of writs and the custody of debtors. All 

 writs out of the superior courts are directed to the Constable of Dover 

 Castle, who is always the lord warden, upon which his warrant is made 

 out, directed to and executed by an officer called the bodar. This 

 officer, by a curious anomaly, has also the execution of writs out of the 

 distant civil court at Hastings ; and the necessity of having recourse to 

 him has been a source of inconvenience and dissatisfaction to the latter 

 town. The clerk of Dover Castle acts as under-sheriff. The constable's 

 jail for debtors is within Dover Castle ; and by Act 54 Geo. III. c. 97, 

 their maintenance is provided for by an annual contribution of 30(K., 

 to be levied on the ports and members in proportions fixed by the Act. 

 The lord warden has power to diminish this sum if he think it more 

 than sufficient, and to increase it again. The money is paid over to 

 the registrar of the Cinque Ports, who, at the time of the framing of 

 the report of the late municipal commissioners, was the same person as 

 the clerk of Dover Castle. 



The admiralty jurisdiction of the Cinque Ports, attached to the 

 office of lord warden, is expressly reserved in that clause of the Muni- 

 cipal Reform Act which abolishes chartered admiralty jurisdictions in 

 general. A branch of this jurisdiction appears in the court of Lode- 

 manage, so called from the old English word lodeman, a fead-man or 

 steerer, which is held for the licensing and regulating of pilots, by the 

 lord warden and a number of commissioners, of whom the mayors of 

 Dover and Sandwich are officially two. The lord warden seems 

 anciently to have held a court of chancery in one of the churches at 

 Dover, but it has long been obsolete. 



(Jeake's Charters of the Cinque Ports; Holloway's Histrrrtj of Rye.) 



CIPHER is derived from the Arabic Sifr, which originally signifies 

 " empty, devoid of," and is used as a substitute to denote the figure 0. 

 The peculiar meaning of this symbol, and the important consequences 

 of its nee, gave to the Arabic arithmetic the name of ciphering, which 

 it retains to this day. 



CIRCE, one of the group of small planets revolving between Mars 

 and Jupiter. [ASTEROIDS.] 



CIRCENSIAN GAMES. [CIRCUS.] 



CIRCINUS, the Compasses, a constellation of Lacaille, below Cen- 

 taurus, and not very far from the South Pole. Its principal star is , 

 of the fourth magnitude, No. 1225, in the Catalogue of Lacaille, and 

 4835 in that of the British Association. 



CIRCLE (cimdus, a little circle, from circus, a ring}, the figure 

 formed by a point which revolves in a plane surface, and always pre- 

 serves the same distance from a given point. The points of view under 

 which this word might be considered are with reference, first, to its 

 properties as a figure of geometry ; second, to the history of the re- 

 searches which were made for centuries, in order to discover the exact 

 ratio of the circumference to the diameter ; third, the effect of the 

 properties of the circle upon several branches of mathematics. For 

 the second, we refer to the word QUADRATURE ; we shall give a few of 

 the first, and a sketch of the third. 



The word circle is sometimes used to denote the circumference or 

 boundary line, sometimes the inclosed figure or area. Frequently a 

 point in a circle means a point on the circumference ; but a point 

 within a circle always means a point in the interior. The centre is the 

 point from which all the radii drawn to the curve are equal ; a dia- 

 meter is a double radius. 



Draw a circle with a centre o, and let o A be any radius. Draw A B 

 perpendicular to the radius, and M N also perpendicular to the radius. 

 Take any points, r and Q, &c. Then among the most essential pro- 

 perties of the circle are the following : 



1. A B is a tangent to the circle. 



2. M N is bisected (halved) by v. 



3. The square on V N is equal to the rectangle (oblong), whose sides 

 are A v and v L. 



4. If any two chords (M N and A Q) cut in w, the rectangle, whose 

 sides are M w and w N, is equal to that whose sides are Q w and w A. 



5. The square on A B is equal to the rectangle whose sides are B o 



