shipping, which sent forth forty vessels for the king's service in the thirteenth century. Though Dunwich was an important place, Stow's description of it is rather exaggerated. It could never have had more than ten churches and monasteries. Its "brazen gates" are mythical, though it had its Lepers' Gate, South Gate, and others. It was once a thriving city of wealthy merchants and industrious fishermen. King John granted to it a charter. It suffered from the attacks of armed men as well as from the ravages of the sea. Earl Bigot and the revolting barons besieged it in the reign of Edward I. Its decay was gradual. In 1342, in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only eighteen remained. Only seven out of a hundred houses were standing in the parish of St. Martin. St. Peter's parish was devastated and depopulated. It had a small round church, like that at Cambridge, called the Temple, once the property of the Knights Templars, richly endowed with costly gifts. This was a place of sanctuary, as were the other churches in the city. With the destruction of the houses came also the decay of the port which no ships could enter. Its rival, Southwold, attracted the vessels of strangers. The markets and fairs were deserted. Silence and ruin reigned over the doomed town, and the ruined church of All Saints is all that remains of its former glories, save what the storms sometimes toss along the beach for the study and edification of antiquaries.

As we proceed down the coast we find that the sea is still gaining on the land. The old church at Walton-on-the-Naze was swept away, and is replaced by a new one. A flourishing town existed at Reculver, which dates back to the Romans. It was a prosperous place, and had a noble church, which in the sixteenth century was a mile from the sea. Steadily have the waves advanced, until a century ago the church fell into the sea, save two towers which have been preserved by means of elaborate sea-walls as a landmark for sailors.

The fickle sea has deserted some towns and destroyed their prosperity; it has receded all along the coast from Folkestone to the Sussex border, and left some of the famous Cinque Ports, some of which we shall visit again, Lymne, Romney, Hythe, Richborough, Stonor, Sandwich, and Sarre high and dry, with little or no access to the sea. Winchelsea has had a strange career. The old town lies beneath the waves, but a new Winchelsea arose, once a flourishing port, but now deserted and forlorn with the sea a mile away. Rye, too, has been forsaken. It was once an island; now the little Rother stream conveys small vessels to the sea, which looks very far away.

We cannot follow all the victories of the sea. We might examine the inroads made by the waves at Selsea. There stood the first cathedral of the district before Chichester was founded. The building is now beneath the sea, and since Saxon times half of the Selsea Bill has vanished. The village of Selsea rested securely in the centre of the peninsula, but only half a mile now separates it from the sea. Some land has been gained near this projecting headland by an industrious farmer. His farm surrounded a large cove with a narrow mouth through which the sea poured. If he could only dam up that entrance, he thought he could rescue the bed of the cove and add to his acres. He bought an old ship and sank it by the entrance and proceeded to drain. But a tiresome storm arose and drove the ship right across the cove, and the sea poured in again. By no means discouraged, he dammed up the entrance more effectually, got rid of the water, increased his farm by many acres, and the old ship makes an admirable cow-shed.

Disused Mooring-Post on bank of the Rother, Rye

The Isle of Wight in remote geological periods was part of the mainland. The Scilly Isles were once joined with Cornwall, and were not severed until the fourteenth century, when by a mighty storm and flood, 140 churches and villages were destroyed and overwhelmed, and 190 square miles of land carried away. Much land has been lost in the Wirral district of Cheshire. Great forests have been overwhelmed, as the skulls and bones of deer and horse and fresh-water shell-fish have been frequently discovered at low tide. Fifty years ago a distance of half a mile separated Leasowes Castle from the sea; now its walls are washed by the waves. The Pennystone, off the Lancashire coast by Blackpool, tells of a submerged village and manor, about which cluster romantic legends.