The Cinque Ports, Kent

Historical Description

Cinque Ports, The, a maritime district in Kent and Sussex, constituted by Edward the Confessor, and fully organized by William the Conqueror, to defend England from invasion and to supply a navy. The head ports were Dover, Sandwich, and Romney, mentioned at Domesday; Hythe and Hastings, added soon afterwards; and Rye and Winchelsea, added by Henry III.; each had under it towns and places more or less distant, some of them so far off as from 19 to 40 miles. They bad an independent government, peculiar privileges, and special courts, but they lost much of their character at the formation of a royal navy after the Restoration, and underwent sweeping modification by subsequent Reform Acts. The supreme jurisdiction is vested in a lord warden, who is constable of Dover Castle, and whose official residence is Walmer Castle, Deal.