with twenty men and one boy, at their own cost, for fifteen days, and for as long a period afterwards as the king pleased to appoint; but they were then entitled to receive pay for their services.  The sums granted to them by the crown were by no means a remuneration for the expenses attendant on the large naval force they wore obliged to keep up at all times for the service of the kingdom, and often did not cover a third part of the necessary expenditure.  The ships of the Cinque Ports, therefore, were the navy of the realm, and in almost every reign the pages of history show with how great honour and reputation the Ports discharged the sacred trust reposed in their valour, skill and bravery, by their confiding country.  We sometimes find them fitting out double the number of ships specified in their charters; and when larger ones were thought necessary, they have equipped a smaller number, at an expense equivalent to that which their service by tenure demanded.  In the reign of Elizabeth they had five ships, of one hundred and sixty tons each, at sea for five months, entirely at their own charge; and in the reign of Charles the First, they fitted out two large ships, which served for two months, and cost them more than eighteen hundred pounds.

The honours and privileges granted to the Cinque Ports, in consideration of these services, were great and numerous.  They were each to send two barons to represent them in parliament; they were, by their deputies, to hear the canopy over the king’s head at his coronation, and to dine at the uppermost table, on his right hand, in the great hall; they were exempted from subsidies and other aids; their heirs were free from personal wardship, notwithstanding any tenure; they were to be impleaded in their own towns, and nowhere else; they were to hold pleas and actions real and personal; to have conusance of fines; and the power of enfranchising villeins; they were exempt from tolls, and had full liberty of buying and selling, with many other privileges of less importance.

To direct the energies, to enforce the due performance of the important services, and to protect the extraordinary privileges of the Ports, an officer was created, and styled Lord Warden, Chancellor, and Admiral of the Cinque Ports, an officer of such high dignity and honour, that it has been sometimes executed by the heirs-apparent to the crown, often by princes of the blood royal, and always by persons of the first rank in the kingdom.

History affords abundant proof of the early grandeur and importance of the Cinque Ports, situated in a district which, from the earliest periods of authentic record, has been allowed to be the most fertile, and the best cultivated in the kingdom, as well as the principal seat of foreign commerce.  Here the Roman power in Britain shone in its greatest splendour; many good ports were constructed and fortified, large remains of which exist to the present time, melancholy indications of the instability of all mundane things.