smith; baptized at Sundridge 22 January 1692-3; died 5 and buried 12 February 1741 at Chiddingstone; M.I. there: "Near this Place lies the Body of Strode Hyde, Esq., of Boor Place, who Departed this life February ye 5th 1741-2, Aged 50." His will is dated 7 January 1741, and proved in P.C.C., 6 Feb. 1741, by Elizabeth Hyde, his widow and executrix (53 Trenley). He directs his body to be buried at Chiddingstone; devises Boarplace, his manor of Millbrook, Surrendon, and his lands in Chiddingstone and Penshurst, to his wife Elizabeth Hyde for life, and then to his heirs; and to his son Bernard Hyde his lands in Hammersmith, Darland in Gillingham, and Chatham, and £25 per annum issuing out of Boar Place, Milbrook, etc.; and directs that the communion plate belonging to Boar-place be continued there for the use of the said chapel. He married Elizabeth, daughter of ...., and had issue by her (who was buried at Sundridge 16 February 1746) two sons and one daughter: (1) Bernard Hyde, of whom next. (2) Edward Hyde, died an infant. VIII. Bernard Hyde of Southwark, Gent.; devisee in tail male of Boar Place, Millbrook, etc., under the will of his uncle John Hyde 1740. He seems to have barred the entail, and sold Boar Place and Millbrook to Henry Streatfield, Esq. He died in 1767-8, and was buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. His will is dated 20 July 1766, and was proved in P.C.C., 25 February 1768, by Thomas Sibthorpe of the Middle Temple, Gent., one of the executors (66 Secker). He directs his body to be buried in the vault of Christ Church, Newgate Street, near his late wife Susanna Hyde, "in the large wooden coffin now in my possession;" he confirms a settlement dated 27 and 28 June 1764, whereby he settled Wiggins Key and New River Shares upon certain trusts; he bequeaths his personalty to his wife Ann Hyde for life, and then to his daughters Susana Hyde and Mary Elizabeth Hyde; and leaves £100 to his natural son Bernard Hyde otherwise Schooling, begotten on the body of Jane Schooling. He married, first, Susanna Harrow, who died before 1766, and was buried at Christ Church, Newgate Street; and, secondly, Ann daughter of . . . ., who survived him. By his first wife he left issue two daughters: (1) Susanna. (2) Mary Elizabeth, who married James Butler, and had issue hildren: James Butler, Elizabeth, and Susannah Abigail, who married her second-cousin Savile John Hyde of Quorndon, Esq. (son of John Hyde, and grandson of Savill Hyde of Sundridge, who died April 1741). Bernard Hyde was the last of the family who owned Bore Place and Millbrooks, in co. Kent; and only a few years later his cousin John Hyde parted with Sundridge; and then all the old Hyde estates in Kent left the family. Members of the family are still living in the counties of Leicester and Nottingham and elsewhere; but so far as Kent is concerned, it is unnecessary to trace the descent of the Hydes any further. It only remains to say that PEDIGREES of the Hydes of Bore Place and Sundridge are given in the Visitation of London, 1633-5; Le Neve's Knights; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii., p. 109; and Blore's Rutland, pp. 50-1. Their Pedigree must probably have been entered up at the last Visitation of Kent, which is preserved only in the College of Arms. Their ARMS were: Gules, a saltire or between four bezants, a chief ermine. CREST: An unicorn's head, couped argent, armed and maned or, collared vairé or and gules. These were exemplified by Sir William Segar, Knight, Garter, 16 September 1609. For the purposes of this memoir of the Hydes I have searched carefully the Parish Registers of Sundridge, Chiddingstone, and Chevening, in co. Kent, and the Wills and Administrations at Somerset House. ON THE LANDING-PLACE OF ST. AUGUSTINE. BY GEORGE DOWKER, F.G.S. It may seem presumption in me to re-open the question of the landing-place of St. Augustine after the learned Antiquaries who have written on the subject, so that my essay requires a few words of introduction. I have been led to this enquiry because there seems no agreement among the writers as to the exact locality of the place called Ebbsfleet. In Dean Stanley's Historical Memorials of Canterbury, at the conclusion of the chapter relating to St. Augustine (page 54), he reviews briefly the various places where the event is supposed to have taken place:— "First, Ebbsfleet: for this the main reasons are, 1st, the fact that it was the usual landing-place in ancient Thanet, as shewn by the tradition that Hengist, St. Mildred, and the Danes came there (Lewis, page 83; Hasted, iv., page 289). 2nd, the fact that Bede's whole narrative emphatically lands Augustine in Thanet and not on the mainland. 3rd, the present situation with the local tradition (page 29). "Secondly, The spot called the Boarded Groin (Lewis, page 83), also marked in the Ordnance Survey as the landing. place of the Saxons. But this must then have been covered by the sea. "Third, Stonar, near Sandwich. Sandwich MS., in Boys's Sandwich, page 836. But this, even if not covered by the sea, must have been a mere island (Hasted, iv., page 585). "Fourth, Richborough. Ibid., page 838. But this was not in the Isle of Thanet, and the story is probably founded partly on Thorn's narrative (1242), which, by speaking of Retesburgh in Insula Thaneti, shews that he means the whole port, and partly on its having been actually the scene of the final debarcation on the mainland, as described in a previous page." Following this summary Stanley gives us a Map of the Isle of Thanet at the time of the landing of St. Augustine. In all the accounts of this event that reach us the historical facts have been supplemented and explained upon the views which the authors held respecting the physical, I might almost say geological, changes that have taken place on this coast since the events then referred to. It has been my endeavour as a geologist to trace back the various changes that have taken place in the River Stour and Wantsum estuary for some years past. In the year 1880 I read a Paper before the East Kent Natural History Society, entitled "The Changes which have taken place in East Kent, in the coast and river valleys since the Roman occupation of Britain." This Paper appears to have influenced the British Association on Coast-erosion to ask me to undertake for them a detailed examination of this part of the coast, and report thereon; moreover, I was then furnished with maps and historical data to help me in the enquiry. I had, previously to this, while engaged in the excavations at Richborough, examined the surrounding marshes, and drawn a map which was published with the account in Vol. VIII. of the Proceedings of the Kent Archæological Society. Mr. Green, in the Preface to his book on The Making of England (page vii), writes: "Physical geography has still its part to play in the written records of human history to which it gives so much of its shape and form." It is then to this physical geographical aspect of the question which I would now direct attention. I have quite lately read a Paper before the East Kent Natural History Society on "The Mouth of the Stour." It will be seen that the ancient limits of the Isle of Thanet are inseparably bound up with this question. After the most attentive study of the historical facts relating to Ebbsfleet, I am forced to the conclusion that little is to be gained from the documentary evidence, and that the chief reliance must be placed on the physical aspect of the question. I must necessarily refer to the documentary evidence, which has been translated and commented upon by so many writers, to which there is nothing of consequence to add. I shall, however, in quoting their statements make some remarks on the same as I proceed. Firstly, we find in 449, according to the Saxon Chronicle, "Hengist and Horsa, invited by Vortigern, King of the Britons, landed in Britain on the shore which is called Wippidsfleet." According to another reading, 449, "Vortigern invited the Angles thither, and they came to Britain in three ceols at the place called Wippidsfleet." A.D. 465, "This year Hengist and Esc fought against the Welsh near Wippidsfleet, and there slew twelve Welsh ealdormen, and one of their own Thanes was slain whose name was Wipped."* Mr. Green (Making of England) writes on the landing of the Jutes, 449-450: "A band of warriors was drawn to the shores of Britain by the usual pledge of land and pay, in three keels (so ran the legend of their conquest), and with their ealdormen Hengist and Horsa at their head they landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet." And he goes on to inform us, "the English Conquest as a whole rests on the authority of the English Chronicle; the annals of 449 to the end of the English conquest were probably embodied in the Chronicle in the middle of the ninth century."+ This foundation of the whole story is cloudy enough; according to it the landing-place was called after Wipped, one of the Jutish Thanes slain there. But we do not get any nearer to the exact locality. As these Jutes came at the invitation of Vortigern, King of Kent, who probably fixed his residence at Richborough, we should of course conclude that they came with their ships to the Rutupian Harbour, which was probably situated between Stonar and Richborough. And if the events of 449 were not recorded till the ninth century there is an additional source of uncertainty. Ebbsfleet, moreover, is not mentioned-it is a mere conjecture that Wippedsfleet meant Ebbsfleet, the latter term being supposed to be derived from ebb and flow. * Bede's Ecclesiastical History and Saxon Chronicle, Giles's edit. |