Cinque Ports


The confederation of Cinque Ports is a historic group of coastal towns in south-east England – predominantly in Kent and Sussex, with one outlier in Essex. The name is Old French, meaning "five harbours", and alludes to the original five members. At its peak in the Late Middle Ages, the confederation included over 40 members. There is now a total of 14 members: five "head ports", two "ancient towns" and seven "limbs".
The confederation was originally formed for military and trade purposes, but is now entirely ceremonial. The ports lie on the western shore of the English Channel, where the crossing to the European continent is narrowest.
Inhabitants of the Cinque Ports are called Portsmen.

Origins

The origins of the confederation are obscure, but are believed to lie in the late Anglo-Saxon period, and specifically in the reign of Edward the Confessor. Certain south-eastern ports were granted the local profits of justice in return for providing ships. The ship service of Romney, Dover and Sandwich is noted in Domesday Book. By 1135, the term Cinque Ports had come into use; and in 1155 a royal charter established the ports to maintain ships ready for the Crown in case of need. The earliest general charter granting liberties to the ports in common dates from 1260. Their liberties are also mentioned in the Magna Carta of 1297. The chief obligation laid on the ports, as a corporate duty, was to provide 57 ships for 15 days' service to the king annually, each port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty.
It is sometimes said that the rationale behind the granting of privileges, and their maintenance and extension over several centuries, was the need for the Crown to have a guaranteed supply of men and ships in time of war, and that the Cinque Ports therefore played an important role in the development of the Royal Navy. N. A. M. Rodger questions whether the arrangement was ever intended to raise any genuinely effective naval provision, and shows that the Cinque Ports did not contribute to English strength at sea significantly more than other English ports of similar size. He argues rather that the original privileges may have been granted by Edward the Confessor out of a need to purchase the loyalty of a group of potentially troublesome ports that were of strategic importance to the control of cross-Channel traffic. Notwithstanding this, in the 13th and 14th centuries the ports did play a significant role in the defence of the realm, although their importance declined thereafter.

Membership

Head Ports

The original five ports were:
  • Hastings
  • New Romney
  • Hythe
  • Dover
  • Sandwich
In medieval documents, Hastings sometimes appears to be given precedence among the ports ; but this usage probably arose simply from geographical convenience, with the ports being conventionally listed in order from west to east.

Ancient Towns

By 1190, two further towns had joined the confederation, originally to assist Hastings in her provision of ships. In time they grew in prosperity, and by the 14th century were recognised as having the same "head port" status as the original five ports. In deference to the literal meaning of "Cinque Ports", however, these two additional members were always distinguished under the title of the "Ancient Towns". The confederation is therefore sometimes referred to as "The five Cinque Ports and two Ancient Towns". The Ancient Towns were:
  • Winchelsea
  • Rye

    Limbs

Over the years, a number of further towns and ports joined the confederation as detached "Limbs" or "Members" of the seven head ports: they took a share in the burden of ship service, and a share in the privileges of the confederation. The limbs were often distinguished as either "corporate limbs", whose status was confirmed by royal charter, and which enjoyed a considerable degree of self-government, or "non-corporate limbs", which were more heavily dependent on, and governed by, their head port.

Corporate limbs

The corporate limbs were:
  • Pevensey
  • Seaford
  • Tenterden
  • Lydd
  • Folkestone
  • Faversham
  • Fordwich
  • Deal

    Non-corporate limbs

Non-corporate limbs have at various dates included:
Many of the historic members of the confederation have now either ceased to exist as a result of coastal change, or have shrunk or lost status for other reasons. The following are the current limbs of the confederation:
  • Tenterden
  • Lydd
  • Folkestone
  • Faversham
  • Margate
  • Deal
  • Ramsgate

    Privileges

In return for their ship service, the towns received various privileges, including:
This means that in effect they were granted a degree of self-government, legal jurisdiction, and financial advantage. In many respects, the confederation was considered to hold a status equivalent to that of a shire.
From an early date representatives of the ports sat in Parliament. The practice had been regularised by the end of the 14th century, with the five head ports and two ancient towns, and one corporate limb, each being entitled to send two Members to Parliament.

Institutions

Many of the Portsmen were fishermen, and in pursuit of herring sailed annually to the Norfolk coast, where they claimed rights of "den and strand" on the sandbank at the mouth of the River Yare. The settlement there gradually developed into the town of Yarmouth. The ports therefore became closely involved in the regulation of the annual autumn Herring Fair at Yarmouth, and this was probably the main incentive for the individual ports to work together collectively in confederation.
A Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was appointed, an office frequently, and by the end of the 13th century permanently, combined with that of Constable of Dover Castle. The joint office survives to the present day, but is now a purely honorary title, with an official residence at Walmer Castle.
The confederation had its own system of assemblies and common courts:
  • The court of Shepway is first mentioned in the late 12th century. It was a local royal court of justice, presided over by an officer of the Crown, and linked the confederation to central government. It met at Shepway Cross, near Lympne, where officers of the various members of the confederation were summoned to attend. The court met at irregular intervals, and over the course of the 15th century appears to have fallen into a slow decline. By the early 17th century it had effectively ceased to function. Nevertheless, it continued to hold a nominal existence, as it was at special sessions of the court that the Lord Warden was installed in office. The court of 1598, summoned for the installation as Warden of Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, was held at his manor of Bekesbourne; and in the late 17th century the court was moved to Dover. The approximate site of the original meeting place is now marked by a war memorial erected in 1923, also known as Shepway Cross.
  • The Brodhull was a general assembly for representatives of the five head ports and two ancient towns. "Brodhull" is thought to have been originally a place-name, and presumably the original place of meeting, close to Dymchurch. The assembly subsequently met in Dymchurch, but after 1357 came to meet regularly in New Romney. One of the principal tasks of the Brodhull was the supervision of the Yarmouth Fair, and the appointment of bailiffs to manage it. By 1432 it met regularly twice a year. Meetings followed a parliamentary pattern, and were presided over by a "Speaker": the speakership changed on 21 May each year, the right of appointment moving from port to port in geographical order from west to east. In the 15th and 16th centuries the name "Brodhull" gradually became corrupted into "Brotherhood", and in the post-medieval period the court was more usually known as the Brotherhood.
  • The Guestling appears to have originated as a local meeting of the west ports. It probably took its name from the village of Guestling, a few miles west of Winchelsea, which may have been its original meeting-place. Over the course of the 16th century it developed into a more general meeting of all the head ports, ancient towns and corporate limbs, usually held annually and often in conjunction with the Brotherhood. As it represented a larger group of ports than the Brotherhood, it eventually became the pre-eminent assembly. However, in 1663 the Yarmouth service was suspended indefinitely, and thereafter both the Brotherhood and the Guestling fell into decline. The two courts continue to hold a nominal existence, but since 1866 have been held jointly.

    Barons

All Freemen of the ports, termed "Portsmen", were deemed in the age of feudalism to be barons, and thus members of the baronage entitled to attend the king's parliament – a privilege granted in 1322 in recognition of their earlier support of the Despensers, father and son. Termed "Barons of the Cinque Ports", they reflected an early concept that military service at sea constituted land tenure per baroniam making them quasi feudal barons. The early-14th-century treatise Modus Tenendi Parliamentum stated the Barons of the Cinque Ports to hold a place of precedence below the lay magnates but above the representatives of the shires and boroughs. During the deposition of Edward II, the chronicles made a specific point of noting the presence of the Barons in the embassy of deposition – "praecipue de portubus ... barones des Portez". Writs of summons to parliament were sent to the warden following which representative barons of the Cinque Ports were selected to attend parliament. Thus the warden's duty in this respect was similar to that of the sheriff who received the writs for distribution to the barons in the shires. The existence of common seals of the barons of the individual ports suggests they formed a corporation as the seal was designed to be affixed to charters and legal documents which would bind them as a single body. This no doubt related to their privileges as monopolies. The warden and barons often experienced clashes of jurisdiction.
In the 21st century the title "Baron of the Cinque Ports" is now reserved for Freemen elected by the Mayor, Jurats and Common Council of the Ports to attend a coronation and is solely honorary in nature. "Since time immemorial", the barons had held the right to hold a canopy above the monarch during the procession on foot between Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey. This procession was discontinued after the Coronation of George IV in 1821, but for the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902 the barons were found a new role. They were to process inside the abbey as far as the choir and there receive the banners of the monarch's realms, a function which they have repeated at all the 20th-century coronations. For the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla in 2023, fourteen barons joined the congregation in the abbey, representing the original five ports, the two ancient towns and the seven limbs.