KENT.

DOVER.

THE LANDING PLACE, OUTER HARBOUR.

THE harbour of Dover was distinguished by extraor dinary privileges, even before the Conquest. It appears from Domesday Survey, that the burgesses provided twenty ships, each manned with twenty-one men, for the king's use, for fifteen days every year, and that when the king's messengers came to this port, they paid for the passage of a horse, threepence in winter and twopence in summer, but the burgesses found a pilot and an assistant; when more were required, they were furnished at the royal expense. For this species of feudal duty, the inhabitants of Dover were exempted from all suits, services, and ordinary fines at their lord's court, and the resident burgesses were exempted from all tolls and customs throughout England.

Dover remains, to this day, the principal place of embarkation for travellers to the Continent; and besides an establishment of packets belonging to the Post Office, there are many vessels exclusively employed in

the passage from this port to the opposite coast, and frequently reach Calais, which is nearly twenty-three miles distant, in three hours; the shortest passage on record, was made in two hours and forty minutes. The passage from Dover to Calais is commonly performed in less time than that from Calais to Dover, on account of the tide being more advantageous in the former instance.

In the earliest periods of English history, the passage over sea was very frequently restrained by writs of proclamation, ne exeant regno, addressed to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, the sheriffs of the several counties, &c. This arbitrary stretch of the prerogative was the occasion of repeated demands of the House of Commons, by petition to the King, that every man should be at liberty to pass over the sea at his pleasure, upon paying the old accustomed duty of half a mark, as ordained by the king's charter.