neat and tidy and
always ready to receive a guest.

A place like Rye, naturally so strong, a steep island surrounded by
sea or impassable marsh, must have been a stronghold from very early
times; it is in fact obviously old when we first hear of it as a gift,
with Winchelsea, of Edward the Confessor's to the Benedictine Abbey of
Fecamp just across the grey channel in Normandy. Both Rye and
Winchelsea remained within the keeping of the Abbey of Fecamp until,
for reasons of State easy to be understood, Henry III. resumed the
royal rights in the thirteenth century, compensating the monks of
Fecamp with manors in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire. For before the
end of the twelfth century it would seem Rye with Winchelsea had
become of so much importance as a port as to have been added to the
famous Cinque Ports, Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings. From
this time both play a considerable part in the trade and politics of
the Channel and the Straits.

It was to enable her to hold herself secure in this business and
especially against raids from the sea that the Ypres Tower was built
in the time of King Stephen, by William of Ypres, Earl of Kent. It was
a watch tower and perhaps a stronghold, but it was never sufficient.
Even in 1194 Coeur de Lion permitted the town to wall itself.
Nevertheless Louis the Dauphin of France took Rye, and it may well
have been this which determined Henry III. to take the town out of the
hands of the monks of Fecamp and to hold it himself.

Doubtless Rye's greatest moment was this thirteenth century, nor did
she appear much less in the fourteenth and the first half of the
fifteenth century. But often sacked and burned, the town was
practically destroyed by the French in 1378 and 1448, when only the
Ypres Tower, part of the church, the Landgate, the Strandgate and the
so-called chapel of the Carmelite Friars escaped destruction. But from
this blow Rye recovered to play a part, if a small one, in the defeat
of the Armada, and though the retreat of the sea, which seems to have
begun in the sixteenth century, undoubtedly damaged her, it did not
kill her outright as it did Winchelsea, for she had the Rother to help
her, and we find her prosperous not only in the time of the
Commonwealth, but even to-day, when, with the help of a new harbour
at the mouth of the river, she is still able to carry on her trade.

[Illustration: RYE]

Nothing in fact strikes the visitor to Rye more than the b