SECTION VI. WINCHELSEA AND RYE. WINCHELSEA: RYE: CAMBER CASTLE. THE FRIARS, WINCHELSEA. NEW WINCHELSEA is easily merged more than six centuries ago, and the gateway through which he will shortly pass is one of the entrances to the new town, planned and built by Edward I., with the advice of John de Kirkby his chancellor, then Bishop of Ely, on the hill above the low-lying land on which the ancient town had stood. Had the great monarch of the thirteenth century and his clerical architect taken a modern American city for their model, they could hardly have laid out New Winchelsea with greater regularity. The space within the town walls was divided by streets intersecting at right angles and making thirty-nine squares. This arrangement is still perfectly visible from the northern end of the town, though many of the squares are now fields. To no one of the Cinque Ports was the hand of nature more unkind than to Winchelsea. Till the close of the thirteenth century it was a thriving seaport. Suddenly-how suddenly chroniclers seem to differ-the sea submerged it. Then arose the new town on the hill and rivalled the old in its prosperity, courting from its fame and fortune the attacks of foreign fleets; three times was it burnt and sacked by the French ships sailing up to it. But with its fine harbour and fine trade Winchelsea rallied from its misfortunes and throve again, till slowly-very slowly, but very surely-the sea deserted it, and left it a Cinque Port only in name, high and dry, and more than a mile from the ocean's highway, as we see it to-day. WINCHELSEA AND RYE. 77 The exact period at which Winchelsea was left without at least a waterway, and deserted by its traders, is not quite apparent. Queen Bess, in 1573, found so many of them there to welcome her that she christened the place "Little London"; so thatunless her majesty was, on the occasion, in an unusually sarcastic mood—there must have been something of a harbour—something to keep up commercial life there-till nearly the close of the sixteenth century. No very important houses now stand above ground, but many mere cottages have exceedingly fine stone cellarage with vaulted roofing. On one of the occasions on which Winchelsea was attacked, its church seems to have suffered severely; indeed, only the chancel now remains. Why the nave was never rebuilt we cannot say, but the inhabitants, despite their prosperity, seem to have contented themselves with walling up the west of the chancel and erecting a porch over the doorway made in this wall. Yet in what remains of Winchelsea church is much that is interesting and beautiful. One of the most noticeable features is the exquisite canopied altar-tomb of Gervase Alard, Admiral of the Cinque Ports, who died in 1306. To the Alards—an illustrious family of merchant seamen the town of Winchelsea certainly owed much. They were already prominent townsmen in 1235, and their fortune did not vanish even with the submersion of the place in which it had been won; their wealth was liberally bestowed in advancing the fortunes of the "new" Winchelsea, and in the magnificence of the monument erected to Gervase we have probably an expression of the gratitude with which his fellow-townsmen, and indeed dwellers in the Cinque Ports generally, regarded their admiral. As to the number of religious institutions which Winchelsea contained, there appears to be considerable diversity of opinion amongst antiquaries. For our purpose it is only needful to refer to that of which any considerable amount of tangible evidence exists: the house of Franciscan friars, or, as it is now called, the "Friars." The ruins of this establishment stand in private GERVASE ALARD'S TOMB IN WINCHELSEA CHURCH. grounds, but to them the really interested visitor is not likely to be denied access. They lie a little to the south of the church. Only the portions of the chapel, including a beautiful chancel arch, |