About ten witnesses were examined, and the result of their evidence may be thus summed up:—
   They all agreed that it was not a chapel of ease. According to one witness, there were then sixty "houseling people" in the hamlet, eighty according to another, and 100 according to a third. That there was no haven there, save only a creek of salt water, frequented only by lighters to fetch wood; though a little pinnance of the King's had been brought there to be repaired (thus connecting Tenterden with the Cinque Ports and Royal Navy). That mass had been said in the chapel for the last two years by one Peter Hall; and no other sacraments administered but mass, matins, even song, holy-bread, and holy-water, all which was done with the license of the vicar; that lands called chapel lands, including a mortuary-garden, had been left for the support of a priest.
   Within a few months of this inquiry, I find amongst the particulars for grants, one to two brothers, Robert and John King, of London, merchant tailors, of "the late free chapel called Smallhythe," then vacant. "The lead,

lights, and advowson excepted." This sale appears to have been effected about the time the chantries were sold, but I am rather in a fog as to this. If it was, then it is obvious that a fresh trust must have been created, based on the principles of the Reformed Church. It is now a separate ecclesiastical district.
   I must hasten on; the threatened invasion during the reign of Elizabeth, first by the Roman Catholics, with the sanction of Pope Pius V, with a view to overthrow the Queen's government, and afterwards by the Spaniards, led to the mustering, arming, and training of the inhabitants of Tenterden, as a limb of the Cinque Ports, and they had to provide twenty-four men and four horses. A beacon or fire signal was hung at the top of the church, on a pole eight feet long. It resembled an iron kettle. Watchmen were stationed near it at night, while during the day a light horseman, called an hobiler, was in readiness to communicate with Cranbrook and the neighbouring stations. Muster rolls were also preserved, of the trained bands of the town and hundred.