Now in this lies all the greatness of Tenterden.  Rye, which had early been added to the Cinque Ports, was a place of very considerable importance, but upon the east it was entirely cut off by Romney Marsh, upon the west, too, a considerable marshland closed by a great and desolate hill country closed it in, but to the north was a navigable river, a road that is, leading up into England, and at the head of it a town naturally sprang up.  That town was Tenterden, and her true position was recognised by Henry VI., when he united her to Rye.  Till then she was one of “the Seven Hundreds” belonging to the Crown.  Domesday Book knows nothing of her; as a place of importance, as a town that is, she is a creation of Rye, and her development was thus necessarily late and endured but for a season.  I suppose the great days of Rye to have been those of the thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and it was therefore during this period that Tenterden began its career as a town.  After the failure of the sea, Rye sank slowly back into what it is to-day, but Tenterden would appear to have stood up against that misfortune with some success, for we find Elizabeth incorporating it under a charter.

There can be but few more charming towns in Kent than Tenterden as we see it to-day, looking out from its headland southward to the great uplifted Isle of Oxney beyond which lies the sea, and eastward over all the mystery of Romney Marsh.  The church which should, one thinks, have borne the name of St Michael, is dedicated in honour of St Mildred.  It is a large building of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the tower, its latest feature, being also its noblest.  Indeed the tower of Tenterden church, if we may believe the local legend, is certainly the most important in Kent.  For it is said, and, rightly understood, there may after all be something in it, to have been the cause of the Goodwin Sands.  Fuller asserts “when the vicinage in Kent met to consult about the inundation of the Goodwin Sands (date not given) and what might be the cause thereof, an old man imputed it to the building of Tenterden steeple in this county; for these sands, said he, were firm sands before that steeple was built, which ever since were overflown with sea-water.  Hereupon all heartily laughed at his unlogical reason, making that effect in Nature which

was only the consequent on time; not flowing from, but following after the building of that steeple.”

According to Latimer, however, it was Sir Thomas More who drew this answer from the ancient, and if this be so, it certainly fixes the date.  “Maister More,” says Latimer, “was once sent in commission into Kent to help to trie out (if it might be) what was the cause of Goodwin Sands and the shelfs that stopped up Sandwich haven.  Thither cometh Maister More and calleth the countye afore him, such as were thought to be men of experience, and men that could of likelihode best certify him of that matter,