At present the national fame of our Antient Towne of Rye rests on the cavorting of its celebrity inhabitants. Not content to be hosting Sir Paul McCartney’s Divorce Battle we now find that a posh Tory MP has fallen for his even posher Interior Designer. We wish the two gentlemen every happiness…but our sympathies must go to the poor wife. It cannot be easy to be left for another man. Still it makes us wonder if it is the ozone…or something in the waters.
It was not always thus. In 1724 Daniel Defoe included Rye in his Travel Writings. In those days the Chatham Road was the most trafficked in the kingdom. A cursory glance at the map will explain. In the Age of Sail ships might be holed up in The Downes for weeks awaiting a shift in wind. So it was no accident that John Fletcher…the inventor of the Fore-and-Aft rig that allows a vessel to sail against the wind…hailed from these parts.
To appear in Defoe’s travel writings did not mean he actually set foot in the town. Defoe was incapable of writing about a place without giving the impression that he was in the thick of it watching events unfold with his own eyes. Ever the newspaper man.
Jo Kirkham is a Rye Councillor and a former Mayor. She is also one of the founding members of Ryesingers. At Wednesday’s rehearsal we had our first run-through of a Benjamin Britten carol to be performed at our Christmas Carol Concert in the neighbouring parish of Guldeford. Before we got going Jo slipped me her promised 40-page booklet about Rye’s Huguenot Past. French Historians are in town this weekend to meet with English Scholars. You may never get to read this sentence as I hope to be allowed to replace it with a Hyperlink to the 20 000-word booklet.
Most of England’s New Immigrants pass through Dover Docks or Heathrow Airport. But until a hundred years ago Rye was an Immigrant Port Town…boatloads of refugees were welcomed into the town. In April 1682 for instance the Vicar of St Mary’s William Williams and a Jurat Lewis Gillart arranged written testimony that a recent group of newcomers were ‘sober, harmless, innocent people such as serve God constantly and uniformly according to the usage and custome of the Church of England’.
The Rye Poverty Fund of 1804 began as the Royal Bounty in 1681. Jo Kirkham writes: ‘When the funds came to Rye the Lords Commissioners oversaw the distribution, the English Committee scrutinised it and the French Committee allotted it to individuals. Not such a silly way to do things.
After the Restoration of King Charles II and the subsequent fall of Clarendon in 1667 England was ruled by a five-man council made up of Thomas Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Anthony Ashley Cooper and Lauderdale. This is the origin of the word Cabal. My History Boys and History Girls would be instructed to choose one of these gentlemen and give a one-hour presentation to the lower forms three weeks later. Real History is fun.
For the first few days these new History Scholars would play computer games or go shopping. But then unease would set in…followed by panic. They would work their mobile phones until slowly but surely they would find themselves weaned off shopping and gaming…and into Googling. A review session would be advisable after ten days.
In the second week arrangements might be made for our Young Researchers to follow up the leads they turned up on Google by spending a day or two at the university libraries in Cambridge. There is a poverty of imagination among Teaching Professionals that equates Incarceration and Childminding with Education. When will they ever learn?
As a teacher or a parent I would expect to help these scholars with their presentations. How strange is the obsession with Marks and Grades that would call such sensible behaviour ‘cheating’! We want our Young Researchers to learn how to learn not how to take exams. Self-esteem is valuable…and fragile. A failure in front of your peers is to be avoided. As confidence grows assistance may be withdrawn…or converted to a safety net that is there if requested.
In May 1670 Charles’ Cabal negotiated a Secret Treaty with King Louis XIV of France to raise an army and re-equip the Royal Navy. England was part of The Triple Alliance with Sweden and the Netherlands. And the purpose of rearmament was to destroy the Dutch Republic and declare for The Pope.
You are there before me. After successfully completing Level One these History Boys and Girls of ours would be sent out into the World of Scholarship and told not to come back until they had found out the Who? Whom? of these conspiracies. Real History is fascinating.