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about 120 tenants or heirs of tenants, among whom are
seven women, a priest, clerks, a skinner, a cobbler, and millers. They
paid in rent 44s. 5d. (John the miller of Stonar paid 5s. twice a year
for his mill. The Black Book, 23.)
In 1359 Edward III lodged in Stonar from October 11th to
28th in the house which Robert Goverils had lately possessed, waiting to
embark at Sandwich for foreign parts (Boys' Sandwich, 669). In
the same year there was a great inundation; and this was followed in
1365-6 by what is recorded to have been a more destructive one (Boys,
669). In 1373 (Murray, op. cit. 56) Stonar refused to pay the subsidy
assessed on it as it had been decided in 1368 that their town lay in
Kent without the Cinque Port liberty, but in 1384 the church was
included in the Deanery of Sandwich. The next year the French with
eighteen ships descended on the town and having first laid it waste
destroyed it with fire. The Abbot of St. Augustine's at the time was at
his manor of Northbourne and, as Thorne tells us,1
would have saved it [Stonar] had he been able to find free passage from
his manor to Sandwich. "The Abbot being thus foiled by the French
ships" which, as Davis notes, must have occupied the Wantsum
Channel far up from Sandwich, "wishing with God's help to keep safe
his own property and that of his tenants [and] making a detour by
Fordwich and Sturry, succeeded with great toil in reaching the
island" of Thanet. The whole story is a dramatic account of the
treachery of Simon Burley, |
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Constable of Dover Castle, and of attempts
of the French to get a footing in Thanet. Philipott's
observation on this destructive raid is that Stonar "ever since
hath found a sepulchre in its own rubbish."2
In the Index to the Cinque Ports White Book, edited
by H. B. Walker, 1905, 53, is the entry under the date 1520, Robt Broke
of Sandwich to have 40/- of Mr Worms "for hurts received at
Stonar."
The New Black Book of Sandwich, which records
matters from 1608-42, contains a petition to the Lord Warden for leave
to take stones from Stonar to mend its (Stonar's) highways. Sir Henry
Crispe as owner refused to give leave. The Lord Warden "refers ye
matter and agrees that stone may be taken till ye Title can be tryed by
Law." In 1650, two years after Sir Henry's death, there was an
order for this work to be done as the inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet
needed to pass that way to the Haven, and that "there be a footway
and posts or beacons about ye horseway to direct the passengers when the
water shall overflow the ways ........ and that grippes or open places
be made to pass away the water that it annoy not the marshes."
Sir Henry stood very much on his rights in any claims of
Sandwich over Stonar. In an early epitome of the Black Book
"a Ryot at
1 Wm. Thorne's Chronicle
of St. Augustine's Abbey, ed. and trans. by A. H. Davis, 1934, p.
651.
2 Villare Cantianum, 1659, p.
390. |