54> THE ISLE OF RUIM. 



middle ages it remained the great harbour for continental 

 traffic. Edward III. sailed thence for France or 

 Flanders, and as late as 1446 it is still spoken of by a 

 foreign ambassador as the resort of ships from all 

 quarters of Europe. 



Still, the Wantsum was all this while gradually silting 

 up, a grain at a time, and the Isle of Ruim was slowly 

 becoming joined to the opposite mainland. When 

 Leland visited it, in Henry VIII. 's reign, the change was 

 almost complete. ' At Northmouth,' says the royal 

 commissioner, in his quaint dry way, ' where the estery 

 of the se was, the salt water swelleth yet up at a Creeke 

 a myle or more toward a place called Sarre, which was 

 the commune fery when Thanet was fulle iled.' Sand- 

 wich Haven itself began to be difficult of access about 

 1500 (Henry VII. being king), and in 1558 (under Mary) 

 a Flemish engineer, ' a cunning and expert man in water- 

 works,' was engaged to remedy the blocking of the 

 channel. By a century later it was quite closed, and the 

 Isle of Thanet had ceased to exist, except in name, the 

 Stour now flowing seaward by a long bend through 

 Minster Level, while hardly a relic of the Wantsum 

 could be traced in the artificial ditches that intersect the 

 Cat and banked-up surface of the St. Nicholas marshes. 



Meanwhile, Thanet had been growing once more into 

 an agricultural country. Minster, untenable by its nuns, 

 had been made over after the Danish invasions to the 

 monks of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and it was they 

 who built the great barn and manor house which were 

 the outer symbol of its new agricultural importance. 

 Monk ton, close by, belonged to the rival house of Christ 



