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THE TOWN AND PORT OF NEW ROMNEY.

BY EDWARD BACHELER WALKER.

AMONGST the Archives of New Romney, still preserved in the Town Hall, are some of peculiar and especial interest, not only in so far as they relate to the old town and port itself, but in the opportunities they give us for carrying ourselves back some five centuries or more, and searching into the habits and manner of living of our long-buried and long-forgotten ancestors; drinking with them, and eating with them; or journeying with Master William Holyngbroke and his servants to the Parliament at Westminster, or to the Lord Warden's court in old St. James's Church at Dover, and perhaps even being allowed a glimpse at his comely spouse, who remained at Romney, driving those hard bargains with the purchasers of her blankets which, at least in part, served to provide the means for the grandeur of her lord at Westminster, or at Dover. I think too that it may be of some comfort to us (if anything can be so), during our too-frequent interviews with the collectors of rates and income tax, to reflect that, however much we may object to the few pence in the pound demanded by the one or the other, they would be but as a drop compared to the ocean of taxation in which our forefathers contrived not only to live, but, as is abundantly proved by these records, to enjoy themselves. Perhaps indeed, to a very strict moralist, some of their little transactions may appear somewhat questionable; such transactions I mean as making handsome presents to any accessible, or one might almost say inaccessible, person who might be likely to have the ear of, or to "stand well with" the Lord Warden, "that he might speak for us with the said Lord." And these instances occur in almost any paragraph that

records a suit, whether with the men of "Hethe," or of Lydd. With the latter, the quarrels were frequent and bitterly fought out, a circumstance to which is perhaps to be attributed the existing, but now happily friendly, rivalry between the two places.

As is the case with so many other places, the earliest detailed information as to New Romney and its inhabitants is to be found in the Domesday Book, at the compilation of which there appear to have been no less than 156 burgesses in “Romenel,” as it is there called: eighty-five of these belonged to the Archbishop's manor of Aldington," and were worth to the lord £6;" the Archbishop also had twenty-one burgesses in Romenel belonging to the manor of Lamport, and Robert de Romenel had the remaining fifty. As to their privileges, we find that of them the king had all service, and they were quit, on account of their maritime service, of all customs except three: theft, breach of the peace, and forestel, i.e. robbery or assault on the highway.

The earlier manner of government and privileges of the town, and its original incorporation, supposed by some to date from the reign of Edward the Confessor, seem lost in the mists of antiquity. There is however preserved in the library of St. Catherine's College, at Cambridge—whether it came there by fair means or foul no one seems to know-a manuscript, bound, and with the arms of the Corporation of New Romney upon the cover, written in Norman-French in and after the 26th year of Edward III, [1352] by Daniel Rough or Rowe, one of the early predecessors of our friend Mr. Stringer in the office of Town Clerk. This document contains "the usages of Romene from time out of memory there used; first, it is the usage from year to year to elect twelve jurats to keep and govern the said town." Woe, however, to the luckless wight, who being elected a jurat is unwilling to serve! "If any baron, after the election of the said community, will not be obedient to do the said office of jurat, the bailiff, with all the community, shall go to his house, and the said disobedient, his wife, and his children, and other household, shall turn out of his house, and shall shut the windows, and his door they ought to seal and seques

trate, and so they ought to remain until he wish to set himself right by doing the said duty of jurat." The powers of the jurats at this time were considerable; among other things they held powers of distress "upon all whom they shall deem rebels, touching the service of our lord the king, and in all points touching the maintenance and profit of the common franchise." The "service of our lord the king" I take to mean service in the ships of war, belonging to the corporation and furnished by them, when required by the sovereign. The dignity of the jurats too was carefully protected from any disrespectful conduct on the part of less exalted mortals, as, 'If any man shall curse any one of the jurats, and lay hands, upon him, against the peace of our lord the king, the bailiff shall have power to imprison him, and keep him in prison until he shall have paid a fine, by assessment of the other jurats, to the jurat so offended by him." And such fines were likely to be no very light ones, as may be judged from the proceedings in like cases of the aldermen of the city of London, who enjoyed similar power. It was also in the power of any freeman to claim to buy a share in all kinds of merchandise landed upon the quay, belonging to a non-freeman; and no Fleming nor other alien might be taken by his host, to buy or sell merchandise, without leave of the bailiff, and then only in the presence of his host; from this and a somewhat similar regulation in force at about the same period at Great Yarmouth, I should imagine that the innkeepers were in some degree held responsible for the transactions of foreigners, and others who lodged with them. Judging from the severity of the following regulation, growing wood must either have been so plentiful as to have been a general temptation to dishonesty, or even a greater rarity than at present. "Also if any person is found cutting wood within the franchise, he is to have the pillory the first time, to have his ear cut off, and to be taken to the other end of the town and made to abjure it;" on a second occasion he is to lose the other ear; and on a third offence to suffer death.

From the following letter of the barons of Romney "to their dear brothers, and combarons, and friends, the Mayor and barons of La Rie," we gather that their interest in their

fellow townsmen, or at any rate in their widows, did not always cease upon the fair ladies leaving their jurisdiction. "On the dolorous plaint of Deany, now the widow of T. Swain their late neighbour, who has now removed to La Rie, they hear that one Elizabeth Badch has heinously and evilly slandered her, in a public and open place, as having been of evil fame, and has asserted that for her larceny and bad character she has been driven from the town of Romene, and dare not return thither. Therefore for the love of God she has asked them therein to bear witness to the truth. They therefore testify to her good conversation, that she left for no evil cause, and that she may return whenever she pleases, and they further beg that she may have her former good character restored to her."

Time however will not allow us to linger over this interesting volume, and we will now turn to the papers in the Town Hall to which I have before alluded. The earliest of these (a poll-tax list) has been alluded to by Mr. Boys in his Materials for the History of Sandwich, yet for many years after the publication of that work it was lying and rotting in one of the Corporation chests, where it had been thrown together with a vast quantity of parchments and papers of all kinds, old and new. Its rescue from utter obscurity and the able translation of it are due to one who, had he been spared, would have taken much interest in our Society's meeting here, and who most certainly could have given more ample information on the early history of New Romney than almost any man now living. I mean the late Henry Thomas Riley. To his advocacy is due the present well-cared for condition and restoration of the volume. This manuscript, written in part by the same Daniel Rowe or Rough who was the writer of the book now at St. Catherine's College, commences in the year 1380. It contains the names of the different wards of the town, and the names of all persons above the age of fifteen of both sexes in each ward, and also the amount* for which each individual was assessed. I may mention that this assessment is for that poll-tax which

I have omitted to mention that this, so far as I can find, is the only complete assessment for this poll-tax handed down to us.-E. B. W.

caused the rebellion headed by Wat Tyler, and which spread from the coasts of Kent to the Humber. The wards of Romney, at that time thirteen in number, were named the wards of Holyngbroke, of Bocherye, of Hospital, of Codde, of Joce, of Sharle, of Bartelot, of High Mill, or Hyghmelle or Mill Ward, of Hamersnoth or Hamersnod, of Olbeth, of Colbrond, of Deme, and of Hope. Of most of these, all trace of their name and position is lost; Holyngbroke and Bocherye (Butchery) are names now unknown; that of Hospital Ward has however probably been preserved in the name of a roadway, to the N.W. of the town, known as Spital Lane. High Mill, the earliest form of which name is Mill Ward, must surely have taken its name from a mill in the same position as the present windmill; and this seems the more certain, as the predecessor of the present mill, and the surrounding buildings, belonged formerly to the corporation, and traces of more than one mill in the same situation are to be found among the town records, in the shape of bills and vouchers for their maintenance and repair. I do not know at all the average duration of a windmill, but though the continually occurring improvements of these days may necessitate frequent changes and rebuilding, I should imagine that before the seventeenth century such improvements caused few if any changes of structure; and as the site of the present mill, the highest point in the town, has certainly been occupied by a mill for more than two hundred years, if not longer, we may surely assume that one on the same site gave its name to the ward in 1380. The name of Deme exists in Demechurch or Dymchurch, a neighbouring village on the east, but as to whether this was itself considered to be one of the wards of Romney there is no evidence whatever; as the village seems never to have had any share in the privileges of the Cinque Ports, as a limb of Romney or otherwise, I should infer that the village gave its name to the ward nearest it, rather than itself constituted the ward. The same remarks may possibly apply to Hope Ward, Hope being the commonly used abbreviation of Hope-All-Saints, the name of the neighbouring parish to the All this however is a mere matter of conjecture.

north.

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