THE ISLE OF RUIM. 245 



existing town. But as the Northmouth closed up, and 

 Sandwich Haven decayed, the Mere Gate naturally 

 became the little local port for corn grown on the island 

 and wool raised on the newly-reclaimed Minster Level. 

 A wooden pier existed at Margate long before the reign 

 of Henry VIII., when Leland found it " sore decayed," 

 and the village was in repute for fishery and coasting 

 trade. Throughout the Stuart period Margate was the 

 ordinary place of departure and arrival for Flushing and 

 the Low Countries. William of Orange frequently 

 sailed hence, and Marlborough used it for almost all his 

 expeditions. It was about the middle of the last century, 

 however, that the real prosperity of Margate first began. 

 Then it was that citizens of credit and renown in London 

 first hit upon the glorious discovery of the seaside, and 

 that watering-places tentatively and timidly raised their 

 unobtrusive heads along the nearer beaches. The 

 journey from London could be made far more easily by 

 river than that to Brighton by coach ; and so Margate, 

 the nearest spot to town (by water) on the real sea with 

 any accommodation for visitors, became in point of fact 

 the earliest London seaside resort. It was, if not the 

 first place, at least one of the first places in England to 

 offer to its guests the perilous joy of bathing machines, 

 which were inaugurated here about 1790. 



With the introduction of steamers Margate's fortune 

 was made. Floods of Cockneydom were let loose upon 

 the nascent lodging-houses. Then came the London, 

 Chatham and Dover, and South Eastern Railways, and 

 with them an ever-increasing inundation of good- 

 humoured cheap-trippers. The Hail-by- the- Sea an4 



