hey fitted out two large ships, which served for two months, and cost
them more than eighteen hundred pounds.

The honours and privileges granted to the Cinque Ports, in consideration
of these services, were great and numerous. They were each to send two
barons to represent them in parliament; they were, by their deputies,
to hear the canopy over the king's head at his coronation, and to dine
at the uppermost table, on his right hand, in the great hall; they were
exempted from subsidies and other aids; their heirs were free from
personal wardship, notwithstanding any tenure; they were to be impleaded
in their own towns, and nowhere else; they were to hold pleas and
actions real and personal; to have conusance of fines; and the power
of enfranchising villeins; they were exempt from tolls, and had full
liberty of buying and selling, with many other privileges of less
importance.

To direct the energies, to enforce the due performance of the important
services, and to protect the extraordinary privileges of the Ports, an
officer was created, and styled Lord Warden, Chancellor, and Admiral of
the Cinque Ports, an officer of such high dignity and honour, that it
has been sometimes executed by the heirs-apparent to the crown, often by
princes of the blood royal, and always by persons of the first rank in
the kingdom.

History affords abundant proof of the early grandeur and importance
of the Cinque Ports, situated in a district which, from the earliest
periods of authentic record, has been allowed to be the most fertile,
and the best cultivated in the kingdom, as well as the principal seat of
foreign commerce. Here the Roman power in Britain shone in its greatest
splendour; many good ports were constructed and fortified, large remains
of which exist to the present time, melancholy indications of the
instability of all mundane things. The prosperity and importance of this
district, the chief, or indeed the only, seat of maritime power, at that
period, cannot be better illustrated than by the fact of Carausius and
Allectus holding the title of emperors for ten years from the power
afforded them by the naval force of Britain. But the grandeur of the
Romans has faded into dimness, and of their magnificence nothing remains
but mouldering ruins. Their celebrated haven, situated between Kent and
the Isle of Thanet, which for position, extent, and safety, exceeded any
which we have remaining, is now lost; and of their other ports,