Commons 1386-1421

The new town of Winchelsea had been founded on a hill-top site by Edward I in the 1280s, following the destruction of the original town by stormy seas. The following half-century was a period of prosperity, but thereafter Winchelsea declined. By 1342 its population had shrunk noticeably, and the widespread destruction done by the French, when they captured and sacked the town in 1360 and again in 1380, led to further decay.

One of the five original Cinque Ports, Sandwich was under an obligation to render to the Crown the same ship-service as Dover, that is, 20 ships for 15 days each year. Its early development as an important port was due to its excellent harbour and to the formation of the Wantsum channel (providing vessels with an easy route from London to the straits of Dover).

Rye had been founded in the 11th century on a manorial estate belonging to the Norman abbey of Fécamp. Its name, meaning ‘the island’, reflects its situation at the confluence of rivers and the sea which formed the natural harbour known as the Camber. The proximity of Rye to Winchelsea, coupled with the fact that until 1247 they were both under the lordship of the same abbey, caused them to be long treated for administrative purposes as a unit, and their interests remained closely linked.

New Romney had been founded in the tenth century to take the place of the port of Old Romney, which had silted up. The retreat of the sea from New Romney in its turn, hastened in the late 13th century by the effects of great storms which blocked the mouth of the river Rother, so causing it to break through to the sea at Rye instead of at Romney, meant that by 1400 the silting up of the harbour had become irreversible, despite the efforts of the local people to dredge channels.

In Anglo-Saxon times the port had been situated at West Hythe, but the retreat of the coastline prompted the development of Hythe itself some time before the Conquest. Hythe was unable as a consequence of poverty to produce a warship for the King’s service in 1341, but thereafter it apparently maintained a modest prosperity as a market town and fishing port until, in May 1401, it suffered a severe fire in which, it was reported, more than 200 houses were burnt down and goods to the value of £600 destroyed.

Hastings, initially one of the foremost of the Cinque Ports, was by this period the furthest decayed of them, owing to the early silting of its harbour. So far as ship-service to the Crown was concerned, it had long since passed on the bulk of its contribution of 21 vessels to its former members, or limbs, Rye and Winchelsea; and, under an agreement made in 1392, it was now required to find only five ships, and even two of these were in fact to be supplied by other members.