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fleet was off the Isle of Wight. All outward bound
vessels hastened back into Dover and Sandwich. The lieutenant of Kent
and the governors of the Kentish forts met to arrange for defence.95
The trained bands were assembled,96 and a strong chain
was stretched across the river at Gillingham beyond which the king’s
ships were chiefly moored.97 On 11 June the Dutch attacked
Sheppey and Sheerness and a detachment of their fleet sailed up the
Medway, forced the chain at Chatham, burned several of the finest ships
in the British navy, and carried off the largest, the Royal Charles, to
Holland. The county people fled in wildest panic for twenty miles.98
Then came furious activity on the part of those who had left acting
until it was too late.99 A regiment of horse was raised under
Prince Rupert, and twelve new regiments of standing troops, 1,000 men
in each. The Dutch fleet retired, and, when it was again seen near
Chatham on 23 July, was engaged by Sir Edward Spragg, under whom the
ships in the Medway had been placed by the Duke of York. Several Dutch
fireships were destroyed, and the fleet was again engaged by Prince
Rupert on the 26th. On the same day news of peace arrived at Dover, and
was proclaimed with every sign of exultation throughout Kent on 24
August.1 Next year the king paid unexpected visits to the Downs to
view the fleet, and inspected Deal and Dover Castles.2
The secret treaty between Louis XIV and Charles II was signed at Dover
22 May 1670, and in the same year a new scheme for the defence of the
county was drawn up. A regiment of 1,000 foot was quartered at Stroud,
Rochester and Chatham’, and two troops of horse at Gravesend,
Maidstone or Sittingbourne.3 The presence of these troops was
never looked on with favour.4
In the summer of 1673 Kent witnessed the assembling and embarkation of
the troops despatched to Holland, and the calling out of the militia to
protect the coasts. In June, in consequence of the passing of the Test
Act, the Duke of York surrendered his office of Warden of the Cinque
Ports, and in November his second wife arrived at Dover, where the
declaration of marriage was read by the Bishop of Oxford. Sir William
Lockhart’s Scotch regiment, sent there to receive her before
embarkation for Dieppe, mutinied, and at least six companies were taken
by Dutch capers, who pillaged them and put most of the privates ashore
in the county.
In the reign of James a test action to settle the legality of his
exercise of the dispensing power was brought against Sir Edward Hales.5
He was indicted for not having taken the sacrament or oaths of
allegiance and supremacy (though colonel of a foot regiment at
Hackington), at Rochester assizes on 28 March 1686, and
convicted; but judgment in his favour was pronounced
95 Ibid. 1667, pp. 156, 157,
163.
96 Ibid. 20.
97 Ibid. 58, 87. Cf. Maritime Hist. in V.C.H. Kent,
ii
327.
98 Cal. S.P. Dom. 1667, p. 221.
99 Cf. Maritime Hist. in V.C.H. Kent, ii, 328—9.
1 Cal. S.P. Dom. 1667, p. 427.
2 Ibid. 1667-8, p. 468.
3 Cal. S.F. Dom. 1670, p. 26.
12 companies were ordered to
Rochester in 1671. Ibid. 1671, p. 589.
4 Ibid. 1672, pp. 557-9. In a long and eloquent letter, Evelyn, who
was commissioner for sick and wounded Dutch prisoners, declares that by
the middle of September he was in debt to the amount of £3,000 to
miserably poor people for the accommodation of the sick, with a daily
charge still to be incurred of £150; that by the charity of his
friends and relations he had procured £200 worth of clothing; that the
people of Gravesend refused to receive more men, saying that the mayor
might break open their doors, but they could not feed those brought in ;
that divers have malignant and putrefied fevers complicated with the
scorbut, at Dover, Deal. Margate, Faversham, Milton, Sittingbourne, and
even as far as Deptford.
5 Son of the zealous royalist Sir Edward Hales. Formally reconciled to
the Catholic Church i11 Nov. 1685. |