V. TUDOR AND STUART PERIODS.
Henry VII. had little to do with Dover beyond giving a modest sum of money to encourage the commencement of a new harbour. Henry VIII. had largely to do with the Castle, the Harbour, and the religious houses, of which details appear in other Sections ; and mention may be made here of a picturesque event in which the Corporation took part during his reign — his embarkation at this port in May, 1520, to take part in the festivities of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. That embarkation has been portrayed in a well known picture, which is re-produced in one of the stained glass windows of the Maison Dieu Hall, where the King is depicted standing on the high deck of a gorgeous ship in Dover Harbour — the little Harbour at Archcliff, on which this King afterwards spent much of his time and money. On the adjoining quay are represented the Mayor of Dover, Mr. Thomas Vaughan, and other Burgesses bowing before the King, while the heralds' trumpets are blaring in the Royal ears, and the little cannons on Sir John Clark's Round Tower are preparing to give a Royal salute, which, if actually given, was probably the first Ro>al salute ever fired at this port, for cannons (with two " n's ") had then been very recently introduced at Dover.
In the twelve years occupied by the uneventful reign of Edward VI. nothing occurred to advance the prosperity of Dover. On the contrar)-, the sudden stoppage of the Harbour Works and the bad accommodation for the Passage Packets plunged the Town into poverty, which so lowered the standard of independence and love of order amongst the Freemen that the Common Assemblies became disorderly gatherings. During the reign of Queen Mary, owing to religious persecutions, disorder continued, and afforded an excuse for excluding the main body of the Freemen from participation in local affairs and the formation of an inner circle of rulers, called the Common Council.
The establishment of the Common Council dates from the last year of the reign of Queen Mary, and after that year it appears, from the minutes of the Corporation, that disorder and uncharitableness amongst the leading mem bers of the Corporation prevailed, being apparently a continuation of strife from the reigns of Edward VI. and Queen Mary, when there had been bitter feelings between the Catholics and the Protestants.
Owing to these protracted local disorders, (^ueen EHzabeth, acting on the advice of William Hannington, who was the Queen's Superintendent of the Victualling Office at the Maison Dieu, Dover, sent down a Commission to establish peace, the result of which is given in a quaint minute worth reproducing. It runs: —
"O yez ! That on the 15th daye of the moneth of Ap'ell, 1559, came Thomas Keyes and WiUiam Hannington, Esquires, byfore the Worshipfull Thomas Collye, Mayer, Thomas Foxley and seven other Jurats, who (Thomas Keyes and William Hannington) being Commissioners appointed by the Queen's Council by virtue of their letters unto them directed, to enquire of all manner of griefs, discords and dissentions between the said Mayor, Jurats and Commonalty. The letters being read, the Mayor, Jurats and Commonalty then assembled, in the presence of Thomas Keyes and William Hannington, the Commissioners, at which time the inquisiticni made, and the said Mayor, Jurats and Commonalty were all in pcrict peace, amity and concord, thanks be given unto God. and liath openly promised so to continue by God's grace."
The peace made in the presence ut the Queen's Com missioners, in April, 1559, was soon broken, for in July, the same year, it was ordered "' that John Robbyns and Thomas Warren, Jurats, for their disobedience to the Mayor s commandment shall forfeit four pounds apiece to be levied of their goods and chatties." The spirit of insubordination shown by the members also infected the officials, for, in the month of August of the same year, the luwn Clerk, Roger Wood, caused trouble by falsifying the accounts, and, having been arrested, he broke prison, and was heard of no more.
In the following year, Thomas Te'])per, the Mayor, brought about another peacemaking, the Mayor and Jurats agreeing " that from this day forth all manner of old griefs and slanderous words that have moved and stirred between the Mayor and Jurats be clearly forgotten and forgiven, and never to be remembered or spoken of again, but to be lovers and friends, knit in one unity f(jr ever, whereby justice may be better administered for the better gov ernment of the Town; and he or ihey that from henceforth do infringe this present act be clearly dismissed from the Juratship, nev£r to be of the fellowship again." Eight days later one of the Jurats who signed the bond of peace was dismissed for infringing it.
In the beginning of the Stuart Period the Dover Cor poration lost control of the Dover Harbour, which lowered their prestige and diminished their responsibilities. The first of the Stuarts, being ambitious enough to meddle in European affairs, brought a great deal of trouble on the port by making it the embarking place of a riotous hireling force raised in England to fight ingloriously in the Palatinate. In the tragic reign of Charles I. one Mayor had to conduct festivities at the King's marriage, and another had to proclaim to the Town his execution. In this sad reign the Civil War had a blighting effect, and the only local event of a striking character was the capture of the Castle by a small number of townspeople on behalf of the Parliament, with which the principal members of the Corporation were in sympathy. For eighteen years — from 1642 to 1660 — there was no Royal flag flying from the Castle Keep.
The period of the Commonwealth in this Town and Port was the dreariest time on record. The population was then very small, 200 of its houses being empty; the people were in abject poverty owing to military exactions and the stagnation of business.
On the landing of Charles II. at Dover, on the 25th May, 1660, to resume the monarchial rule, the inhabitants rejoiced, because they expected to have settled government and freedom, but local history, during the quarter of a century over which the rule of Charles II. extended, indicates that the bitter strife through which the people had passed had left scars which took long to heal. The Party that had been oppressed during the Commonwealth retaliated as soon as they had sufficient power. Two years after the joyful reception of the exiled King at Dover, Commissioners came down in his name, and, by a threat of expulsion from the Corporation, induced the Mayor and fifty-six other Freemen to conform to religious ceremonies which they had not previously observed, and they removed .seven Jurats and twenty-three Common Council men from office because they would not conform. Those who expected settled government and freedom were disappointed. Three times over the purge was applied by means of laws made in the Restoration Period which undermined the chartered rights which the Corporation had enjoyed for many centuries. Eventually the Charter was cancelled, for alleged legal reasons, but really to enable the Crown officials to exact fees for issuing a new one. In one way and another Dover was made to suffer smartly for the absence of the Royal flag from the Castle Keep from 1642 until 1660. So drastically did the purge operate that Captain Stokes, who brought over the King at the Restora tion, was ejected from his office as Mayor of Dover, and Thomas Papillon, the Member for Dover (who gave the Town the Papillon Charity) had to seek refuge in Holland until the Stuart rule was over.
The short reign of James II. — the last of the Stuarts — did not affect Dover very much. James, as Duke of York, during his brother's reign was popular at Dover as the Lord High Admiral of the Fleet ; and his installation at Dover as Lord Warden, in 1668, was a great local event. John Carlisle, the Clerk of the Passage at Dover, wrote the following account of the procession passing through the Town from the Castle and up to Bredenstone Hill on the Western Heights: —
" First there came the Guard of Dover Castle, with a horse and pistol each ; then Dr. Jenkins, in scarlet, and the Judge of the Admiralty Court, in black ; the Admiralty Court-Sergeant, with silver oar and anchor on it, and the Boder of the Castle, with his mace, all bareheaded. Colonel John Strode, the Lieutenant of the Castle, came next, and was followed by the Duke of York, accompanied by the Duke of Lenox. After them followed Mr. Jermyn and several persons of tjuality, succeeded by the five Mayors of the Ports — Dover, Hastings, Sandwich, Hythe and Romney, and the two Mayors of the ancient Towns, Rye and Winchelsea, all in black g^owns, on horseback, only the Mayor of Dover had a white rose. Then seven Bailiffs, who are Mayors, in their station, in black gowns. Then forty-two Jurats, who were returned to wait upon the Lord Warden, each attended by a sergeant in livery; then Sir Thomas Armstrong's Troop of Horse, to bring up the rear. There was a sermon preached before the Lord Warden in St. James's Church, and, after the ceremony in the tent, which was erected over the Breden Stone, they all returned to the Castle, where great provision was rrnde, including ten fat bullocks, and a great concourse of people all fed free."
The popularity which the Duke of York evoked as Lord Warden and Admiral of the Fleet to some extent remained when, as James II., he, in 1685, bfcame King; but, the majority of the people of Dover being out-and-out Protestants, his attempts to trnmple underfoot the laws of " this Pro testant Kingdom'" alienated from liim the greater number of his subjects in this Town. If it had been a matter of popular feeling, the warm-hearted Duke of York would have stood far above the cold-blooded WilUara of Orange, but the majority of the people of Dover were swayed by their religious principles causing them to join heart and hand in the Revolution.
When William of Orange anchored off Dover on his way to Torr Bay, Dover was ready to welcome him as the defender of the Faith for which so many Kentish folk had >'ielded up their lives at the stake a century earlier.