Alan McFarlane remarked that ‘any particular community in England in the past was probably no more isolated than a Chicago suburb or twentieth century Banbury’ and it is the intention of this chapter to demonstrate that far from being insular in a pejorative sense, the Isle of Thanet was a dynamic community with connections involving the county, the country and also overseas. First, by examining how the secular and religious administration of the area and its principal occupations of agriculture and fishing located the island within a wider context, and then by investigating three ways in which individuals influenced the shape of the community: landholding and kinship links, marriage horizons, and movement into and throughout Thanet. There is also some evidence that this early modern community was not culturally isolated. It will be seen that at a time when roads were often tracks, its long coastline and river traffic to London meant Thanet engaged fully in national life; and had international connections.

Thanet in Its Geographical and Administrative Context

Thanet is situated at the eastern end of the belt of chalk that runs through the county of Kent as the North Downs, forming cliffs along the North Sea and Thames coasts. The harbours of Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate and Birchington are situated in this part of the island; the gradual silting up of the Wantsum formed alluvial marshes along the west and southern parts of the island which provided grazing marshes. Until the twentieth century there was no direct road access to Thanet and travellers had to come via Canterbury; up to the late fifteenth century when the Wantsum Channel was bridged, they would have had to take a ferry at Sarre.

It is not easy to quantify the island’s population in the sixteenth century as there appear to be no surviving lists of names or households and, given the habit of using the same names in each generation and for cousins and siblings, it is not always a simple matter to differentiate individuals. Chalklin reckoned Thanet, at an area of forty-one square miles with thirty-five to forty people per square mile, would, following Hasted, have had a population between 1,435 and 1,640, a figure similar to the coastal survey of 1569.

As Daniel Defoe made his way through Kent in the 1720s he commented on the contrast between inland Kent around Maidstone, what he referred to as ‘This neighbourhood of persons of figure and quality … full of gentry, of mirth and of good company’, and the altogether less elevated inhabitants of the coastal communities, in his opinion ‘embarrassed with business and inhabited chiefly by men of business, such as shipbuilders, fishermen, seafaring-men and husband-men, or such as depend on them and very few families of note’. Although this comment, dismissive of the trading, farming and seafaring activities that occupied and sustained the inhabitants of the maritime communities, speaks volumes about Defoe’s social attitudes, it does also suggest that the towns and villages on the Kent coast had a distinct identity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

What is intrinsic to Defoe’s definition of those who lived on the coast is that they were all to a greater or lesser extent reliant on their maritime location for their continuing prosperity. The sea provided the raw materials for the fishing trade and it made the transport of fish and farmed produce to the markets of London a realistic prospect. Trade with and the passage of people to and from Europe was also an important element of life in these maritime communities. The north Kent coast was also strategically important, encouraging the growth of shipbuilding in the Medway towns, Deptford and Woolwich. This industry, established in the reign of Henry VIII, saw rapid change and growth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The distinct identity of Kent’s maritime communities is also related to the physical environment in which people lived. The parishes on the banks of the Thames and the north Kent coast shared a common environment. The land on which they sat was, at the extremes, marshland bounded by the northern foothills of the chalk downs that run across the county from west to east establishing a clear physical boundary between the north and south of the county. Each of these geological features offered different opportunities. The coastline gave access to the sea for fishing and trade, particularly trade with London.

If any thought is given to defence of the coast and rivers of England from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, it would probably be assumed that this would fall first and foremost on the Royal Navy, what was once grandly called the ‘Sure shield of Empire’. However for a long period of time the navy was not always able to meet these expectations. This was particularly the case in the early sixteenth century when the Royal Navy was still the private property of the monarchs and dependent on them for support and finance. Given these limitations, how and in what ways could the coastal regions of England, and more particularly the maritime counties such as Kent, be protected? The answers lie in fixed fortifications, castles and temporary works protecting strategic works, which could either defend harbours and anchorages or close off rivers to assailants.

In the reign of Henry VIII there was a concerted effort to protect strategic parts of the coast with a number of new fortifications. This was in large part brought about because of Henry’s changing alliances with continental princes, first allying himself with Francis I of France before the English double-crossed the French king by invading France. The fact that Henry had split with Rome added to the problems he faced and could be seen as one of the major impediments to his ambition to be a foremost European ruler because this placed him at odds with all the major powers on the Continent. In light of this, Henry looked to coastal defences as part of his strategy and ordered new fortifications to be constructed which took advantage of artillery. The new defensive walls differed from the castles of the medieval period with their high curtain walls and a central keep with castellated turrets. The new fortifications were relatively low and not necessarily large, often with circular or semi-circular towers and platforms designed specifically to hold ordnance. They became known as device forts. The works were planned under an order, or ‘device’, from the king and the forts and earth bulwarks were built along the coast of England and Wales, including Kent.

Kent’s tidal coastline has changed in length and shape since 1700 due to the constant movement of tides and currents of sea and rivers and human activity. This can be clearly seen when comparing eighteenth-century maps of the Isle of Thanet and Romney Marsh with those of today. Evidence of ‘history without humans’ can be seen in the way that the low-lying north Kent coastline has been ‘eaten by the Thames’, as one eighteenth-century anonymous observer described it. Human activity has directed those changes in attempts to control and restrain the sea by reclaiming marshes, building coastal defences and flood barriers, and constructing harbours, groins and piers. The course and flow of rivers have also been changed by the construction of bridges, embankments, walls, weirs and locks.

The greatest change to the coastline, resulting from human endeavour, has occurred since 1800 and was a result of population increase, the growth of coastal towns, and improved technology. New harbours were built or greatly extended at Ramsgate, Whitstable, Dover and Folkestone. The costly process of guarding the coastline increased in the twentieth century, one example being the intermittent wall of cement from Seasalter east to Herne Bay. These changes were in response to the power of the sea, shown in the great storm of 1703, and by North Sea ‘surges’ of 1881 and 1897, and early 1953. Extensive sea defences, their maintenance and repair, whether by commissioners of sewers in the eighteenth century or by modern local authorities, have required large-scale expenditure of national and local revenues.

The ‘re-invention’ of ships in the nineteenth century, from wood to iron and steel, and from sail to steam and diesel, with increased size and tonnage, required larger yards for construction and new deep-water docking and port facilities. In 1840 the average size of a merchant vessel trading to Kent ports weighed under 100 tonnes; by 1914 that figure had increased nearly twentyfold. At the same time ocean freight was carried in new larger iron- and steel-hulled sailing vessels, and smaller sailing ships continued to ply their trade in Kent’s coastal waters and rivers.

Rivers, for centuries used to transport commercial goods, were also subject to changes to aid navigation, accommodate larger vessels, and to allow for a greater volume of trade.

Gloucester’s question in King Lear forms the starting point for this chapter which seeks to locate Dover in the literary imagination of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by offering a preliminary survey of references that appear in printed works. For reasons of space the chapter focuses predominantly on poetry and prioritises literature in which Dover has more than a passing reference. To date, scholarship on Dover has largely focused on its social and economic history. These studies have revealed that Dover’s strategic location and the demands of its Cinque Port status were very much in the local consciousness of the townsmen themselves who expended much effort defending the town from the encroachment of the sea as well as preparing for foreign invasion and making their case to successive monarchs about the importance of financial aid for maintenance of the harbour. These valuable studies have also captured the ritualised identity of the town and its associations with other ports and with Canterbury. This work has been enhanced by James Gibson’s Records of Early English Drama entries for Dover which reveal indigenous and touring dramatic performances, oligarchic ceremony and momentary glimpses of sights and sounds in the town. To date, little attempt has been made to map Dover in literary culture in this period yet there are key moments in which the town resonates in the national consciousness in ways that are visibly reflected in the arts. This chapter will reflect on some of those moments as they appear in both paintings and literature, on the printed page and in the theatre.

Scholars have come to appreciate more fully the wider significance of the sea, coastal waterways and rivers for early modern society and the wished-for interdisciplinary work on the sea as ‘a social and cultural space’ has been realised in recent publications. This work has been enhanced by Julia Sanders’s use of cultural geography. Her work on ‘Liquid Landscapes’ influentially explores the ways in which different riverine spaces prompt different theatrical responses, from waterborne royal progresses and mayoral pageants in central London to the peripheral staging of pirate executions on the estuarine mudflats of the Thames.

Sandwich is renowned nowadays largely because it is an unusually well-preserved small medieval town. Although often described as a leading member of the group known as the Cinque Ports, its current position some two and a half miles from the sea by road means that its considerable strategic and political importance as the terminus of one of the most important sea routes in our period, connecting southern England to both northern France and Flanders, is often overlooked.

Crucial to this is an understanding of the position of Sandwich on the coast; its advantages and disadvantages. We also need to consider the general difficulties presented to the ships and mariners of this period when navigating in the English Channel, the Dover Strait and the southern North Sea. The biggest potential problem was perhaps the tidal regime in this area. By the second half of the fifteenth century the ebb and flow of tides and the connection of this with the phases of the moon were well understood by the great majority of shipmasters, even of small craft. The well-known picture of the Shipman included in Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales includes the claim that he could ‘rekene wel his tydes, his stremes and his daungers hym besides his herberwe and his moone … he knew alle the havens as they were from Gootland to the cape of Fynistere and every cryke in Britaigne and in Spayne’. Although perhaps overstating the case, there was little alternative to memorising the necessary details. The essential piece of information regarding tides for a shipmaster was to know what was called ‘the tide hour’ or High Water Full and Change or the Establishment of a port, that is the time and date when High Water at the next spring tides was to be expected. (This was, of course, governed by the phases of the moon and could be estimated in advance.) Rutters or sailing directions, certainly in existence for northern waters in the early fifteenth century, gave some basic directions for important destinations but there was no published overall view of this kind of information until the early seventeenth century.

This chapter explores the evidence for the maritime networks and associated trade and exchange relationships of the kingdom of Kent, from its origins in the late fifth century, through to amalgamation with Wessex in the early ninth century. Kent’s rise as one of the earliest, most sophisticated and prosperous states of post-Roman Britain rested largely on a favourable geographic position that was essentially maritime in nature. A location at the point of the British Isles closest to the continental mainland has of course had a huge influence on Kent’s archaeology and history, at least since Britain became an island over 8,000 years ago. In the context of the decades and centuries following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, it can be argued that Kent became especially important as a conduit for continuing and new relationships across the English Channel and the North Sea. This spatial and chronological backdrop is considered first, followed by consideration of the archaeological evidence for boats, ships and seafaring in early to mid-Anglo-Saxon Kent. Thereafter, the exchange of material culture is discussed, both in terms of raw materials and finished goods that flowed into and out of Kent during the fifth to ninth centuries.

Across the Whale-Road: The Geopolitical Context of the Kingdom of Kent

Kent’s unique topographical and coastal geography is covered in depth in Chapter 2 and need not be re-stated here. There can be little doubt that the county’s position as a peninsula at the south-eastern extremity of the British Isles, and at the closest point to the European mainland, has played a key role in its story over the course of millennia. However, in the decades following the collapse, first, of Roman political and military control of Britain and, subsequently, of the western empire as a whole, Kent’s location appears to have become particularly advantageous to its inhabitants. This enabled the new Kentish state that began to emerge from the late fifth century onwards to become, for a time, the wealthiest and most sophisticated in lowland Britain.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, maritime Kent experienced increasing economic activity and expansion in waterborne commerce and industry along the coast, the most important the growth in the coastal grain trade to London. The fishing industry continued to be an important part of their livelihood for many men with small boats in coastal communities but a commercial expansion in the herring industry took place at Dover in the early seventeenth century. The range of goods imported from abroad in general increased, while a boom in Dover’s international trade took place between 1620 and 1650. New industries were established including naval shipbuilding along the Medway and Thames estuaries, a new draperies textile industry in Sandwich, and smaller-scale copperas and gunpowder industries on the Thames and Swale estuaries, all of which expanded Kent’s coastal and continental trade. It was a period which saw continuity, innovation and increasing commercialisation. Some of these developments continued throughout the period whilst others took place during a more limited time, and individual ports, villages and creeks along the coast varied in their fortunes.

Various factors influenced the history of Kent’s maritime trade and industry during this period. The dramatic growth in the population of London and its importance as a distribution centre shaped Kent’s maritime economy and its coastal trade, in particular, increasing the demand for grain from the 1560s and especially malt in the seventeenth century. Imports from the Continent to ports such as Dover and Sandwich were transported to London by road, although also destined for growing local markets as Kent’s population increased. The location of the emergent naval shipbuilding centres on the Medway and at Deptford, Woolwich and Erith on the Thames Estuary was influenced by their proximity to the capital.

London money was not greatly evident, except in those industries which needed a larger capital investment in plant, such as copperas and gunpowder. Government investment and policy, however, developed the naval dockyards and was an essential element in Dover’s entrepôt trade, which was also made possible by government funding for the rebuilding of Dover harbour in Elizabeth I’s reign. London merchants were more active in the export of both grain and cloth to the Continent and especially southern Europe during the seventeenth century.

Trade and exchange, both long-distance and local, were major factors in the Roman world. Britain, Rome’s farthest-flung province, participated in this flow of goods, importing and exporting agricultural products, manufactured goods and mineral resources to and from the near Continent and beyond. Kent, as the nearest point to mainland Europe, was well-placed to participate in such activity.

The Augustan period ushered in a ‘Roman cultural revolution’ which saw the spread of new institutions and new mores across the growing empire. This in turn engendered what Woolf has termed a ‘consumer revolution’, as participating in new forms of social and official activities and relationships required the correct forms of dress and the right accoutrements, ushering in a new suite of material culture. Long-distance trade was stimulated and facilitated by these new structures and institutions which both created and supplied demand. The road system, initially developed with military needs in mind, eased the movement of goods across the empire, as did riverine transport and new harbours. Money and goods flowed to the frontiers to supply the troops and consequently stimulated local trade and industry.

In the western provinces, trade appears to have been at its peak in the first two centuries AD; this is the period at which we find greatest evidence for imports and this is the time when there seems to have been the greatest interest in formulating, negotiating and communicating ‘Roman’ identity through the use of material culture.

The Beginnings of the Roman Period in Kent

Although the Roman period in Britain is usually dated from the Claudian invasion in AD 43, some areas, including Kent, clearly had connections to the Roman world prior to this. Close connections with Gaul in the late Iron Age are indicated by the adoption of new habits and traditions reflecting those on the near continent. These include the use of the potter’s wheel and the replacement of inhumation burial by distinctive cremation rites. Caesar believed the maritime regions of southern Britain were inhabited by migrants (‘Belgae’) from the European mainland but there is no conclusive evidence for substantial immigration, despite the strong cultural connections.

The Cinque Ports, Dover, Sandwich, Hythe, (New) Romney, and Hastings in Sussex, were among the earliest towns in the south-east and indeed in England. Their importance derived from the provision of ships to the monarch by the Portsmen and from the urban privileges which they received in return. These Ports must be considered together with their ‘limbs’, smaller settlements nearby such as Lydd, Fordwich, Folkestone and Faversham, whose mariners provided vessels alongside the Head Port to which they were linked.

These Ports must also be considered together with Rye and Winchelsea, just across the border in east Sussex, which were originally limbs of Hastings, as was Grange in north Kent. Rye and Winchelsea (the ‘Ancient Towns’) overtook Hastings in economic importance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This arose partly from the importance of their shared harbour, the Camber, where fleets assembled in wartime as they did in Sandwich haven. Old Winchelsea was an early beach trading settlement, recorded in 1042, which lay on a now-lost shingle bank, and was replaced by the royal wine-importing town of New Winchelsea which was laid out on a grid plan on a nearby hill in the 1280–90s. Rye was founded in the later eleventh century, but all the five Head Ports were earlier than this, with diverse origins, and had developed organically in relation to the underlying topography. Recent publications from a variety of disciplines, history, archaeology and historic buildings surveys, working in cooperation, have allowed a new assessment of the nature and significance of the Cinque Ports. This chapter takes a brief overview of the development and trajectory of the Ports’ privileges and the advantages which these gave; and sets out two human examples of ambitious individuals who made use of these freedoms and rights.

The Cinque Ports were among the eleventh-century communities, not yet corporate, in which distinctions did not exist between, say, the burgesses and other inhabitants, or those who owned the guildhall or the tolls. The Ports were distinctively urban and even shared a feature of Spindler’s ‘portable’ communities when they exercised their rights to jurisdiction over the important annual Yarmouth herring fair.

By the nineteenth century east Kent had no fewer than seven resorts: Whitstable, Herne Bay, Dover, Folkestone, Broadstairs, Margate and Ramsgate. Of these the last four were among the most popular in England; Broadstairs, Margate and Ramsgate all lie in the nearly forty-mile stretch of coastline collectively known as the Isle of Thanet. Literary representations of these resorts are inflected by factors including transport links, the availability of accommodation and library provision.

Since the 1980s the history of Victorian seaside resorts has been meticulously documented by John Walton, John Whyman, Alain Corbin and more recently John Hassan and John Gillis. Peter Borsay, Jason Wood, John Travis and Marc Arnold have also drawn attention to the complex interactions between visitors, residents and the authorities in different resorts. Far less attention has been paid to the crucial role played by literature in defining, and possibly misrepresenting, the seaside holiday, as each resort tried to consolidate or preserve its reputation in the face of competition and shifting demographic trends.

Visitors were likely to encounter the resorts vicariously in the first instance, through their reading. The more enterprising towns might infiltrate a London audience (notably Holbein Visitors’ List and Folkestone Journal was stocked in the reading rooms of forty-two London hotels), but otherwise readers had to trust to London-based publications unless they were prepared to wait until they arrived in a town to buy a local guide. But there was one other alternative, as increasingly they might also have recourse to fiction for accounts of the resort experience. Sensation novelists such as Wilkie Collins brought new excitement to the image of Ramsgate (The Law and the Lady, 1875); in the early years of the twentieth century local authors such as A. T. Sheppard in Thanet produced historical novels like Running Horse Inn (1906) designed to capitalise on the public fascination with smuggling.

Initially based on inland health spas such as Bath and popularised in the late eighteenth century, by the early nineteenth century the benefits of ritualised immersion in cold sea water were well established following the popular reception of Richard Russell’s 1750 treatise on Brighton.

In the town of Queenborough of Minster parish, Sheppey, John Carden left a detailed last will and testament on 20 September 1522. Within it, Carden bequeathed to his wife, Johanne, ‘four nobillis by year … out of land called “South Cliffe”’ including ‘forty mother sheep and two keyne’. He also left her his ‘new boat’ as long as she remained unmarried and until his sons William and Alex were old enough to make their own living. Carden also bequeathed five ewes to ‘the king fery’, highlighting the importance of maintaining Sheppey’s main transport system between the island and the mainland. In addition, Carden’s religious bequests, like those of other owners of boats and weirs, on the Isle of Sheppey in particular, are consistent with supporting brotherhoods and church lights dedicated to St Peter, St James and St Clement, religious patrons of fishermen, mariners and sea travellers.

The islands of Sheppey, Elmley and Harty, comprising over 22,000 acres of land, during the late medieval and early modern period were well known for their fertile pastureland, corn production and orchards; however, 90 per cent of islanders who bequeathed weirs in their last wills and testaments, dated between c.1400 and 1559, were involved in farming. Although 16,000 acres of the islands collectively were considered to be rich and fertile marsh and pastureland, the islands also had a diverse range of fishing practices. Fishermen at the western end of Sheppey, at Queenborough, were more likely to be dredge fishermen, whilst those living north-east of Sheppey, at Leysdown, were more likely to be involved with weir fishing practices. Queenborough testators were also more likely to have London associations, whilst testators of Harty had Faversham connections. However, there were some interesting yet important exceptions within the testamentary evidence, such as the case of William German of the parish of Leysdown, Sheppey, who produced his last will and testament on 25 October 1507. William German was recorded as residing in Leysdown, yet he requested burial in ‘the churchyard of St Bryde in Fletestrete if I dye within London’. Like similar testate parishioners of Sheppey with connections elsewhere, and boats to bequeath, German’s religious bequests were solely dedicated to Sheppey churches and lights, including St Clement’s light in Leysdown church.