f we look at the ordnance map we shall see that the town of Tenterden
is set upon a great headland thrust out by the higher land of the
Kentish Weald, southward and east towards those low marshlands that
are lost almost imperceptibly in the sea, and are known to us as
Romney Marsh. This great headland, in shape something like a clenched
fist, stands between the two branches of the Rother, the river which
flows into the sea at Rye, and which was once navigable by ships so
far up as Small Hythe just under the southern escarpment of the
headland upon which Tenterden stands. Hither so late as 1509 the
Rother was navigable, and we find Archbishop Warham on the petition of
the people licensing a small chapel there of St John Baptist still in
existence, for the use of the inhabitants and as a sanctuary or a
graveyard for the burial of those wrecked on the "sea-shore" _infra
predictum oppidum de Smallhyth_.

Now in this lies all the greatness of Tenterden. Rye, which had early
been added to the Cinque Ports, was a place of very considerable
importance, but upon the east it was entirely cut off by Romney Marsh,
upon the west, too, a considerable marshland closed by a great and
desolate hill country closed it in, but to the north was a navigable
river, a road that is, leading up into England, and at the head of it
a town naturally sprang up. That town was Tenterden, and her true
position was recognised by Henry VI., when he united her to Rye. Till
then she was one of "the Seven Hundreds" belonging to the Crown.
Domesday Book knows nothing of her; as a place of importance, as a
town that is, she is a creation of Rye, and her development was thus
necessarily late and endured but for a season. I suppose the great
days of Rye to have been those of the thirteenth and fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries; and it was therefore during this period that
Tenterden began its career as a town. After the failure of the sea,
Rye sank slowly back into what it is to-day, but Tenterden would
appear to have stood up against that misfortune with some success,
for we find Elizabeth incorporating it under a charter.

There can be but few more charming towns in Kent than Tenterden as we
see it to-day, looking out from its headland southward to the great
uplifted Isle of Oxney beyond which lies the sea, and eastward over
all the mystery of Romney Marsh. The church which should, one thinks,
have borne the name of St Michael, is dedicated in honour of St