again in the church after about ten minutes.
The Court of Guestling. At about two o'clock the company again assembled round the table in the church, and in the following order: On the right of Hastings were Sandwich, Romney, Rye, Seaford, Faversham and Tenterden; and on the left were Dover, Winchelsea, Pevensea and Deal.
The Speaker began by saying that it was at all times a task for him to speak in public, and that it was more so on an occasion like the present. He then repeated to some extent what he had said at the Brotherhood as to his motive in calling the meeting, and remarked that he had much pleasure in acknowledging the gentlemanly manner with one exception in which the whole of his letters were answered. The Mayor of Hythe was that one exception, he not thinking it requisite to hold a court, and therefore declined to call a meeting to get the sense of the town in consequence of the expense. In the borough from which he (the Speaker) came they did not object to the expense of a shilling or two. He next spoke of the authority and privileges of the Cinque Ports. For four or five hundred years they and their members upheld the naval glory of England, which they had previously established. How the Ports became a Brotherhood he did not know; but, probably they first joined for their own benefit, and having become of considerable importance, they turned the means of their own defence to that of the country. In the grant of a piece of land by the King of Mercia to the church of St. Dennis, at Hastings, the kindly feeling between Hastings and her member of Pevensey was spoken of. This grant was made about the year 790; it was therefore at least 1000 years old. He believed that the good feeling then between Hastings and Pevensey had ever since continued [except perhaps, in 1596 and '7, when the Hastings Mayo, with Mr. Lake, Mr. Fermor and Mr. Henry Pelham were appointed by the Corporation to arbitrate on "the controversies, suits, questions and ambiguities" concerning the waste lands about the sluice at Pevensey; also in the dispute about the Sluice house.] He had no doubt that the same good feeling between the other Cinque Ports existed to this day. A few years after, Edward the Confessor granted a charter and certain exemptions; and this, the earliest notice they had, was probably for services rendered by our forefathers. The Speaker next alluded to Godwin's attacking London, with men from Kent and Hastings, and, doubtless with men from the other Cinque Ports, which at that time were of considerable importance.
