Yet how much has Rye lost! The walls of Coeur de Lion
have fallen, and only one of the gates remains; but so long as the
church and the beautiful strong tower of William de Ypres stand, and
the narrow cobbled streets full of old and humble houses climb up and
down the steep hill, the whole place is involved in their beauty and
sanctity, our hearts are satisfied and our eyes engaged on behalf of a
place at once so old and picturesque and yet so neat and tidy and
always ready to receive a guest.
A place like Rye, naturally so strong, a steep island surrounded by
sea or impassable marsh, must have been a stronghold from very early
times; it is in fact obviously old when we first hear of it as a gift,
with Winchelsea, of Edward the Confessor's to the Benedictine Abbey of
Fecamp just across the grey channel in Normandy. Both Rye and
Winchelsea remained within the keeping of the Abbey of Fecamp until,
for reasons of State easy to be understood, Henry III. resumed the
royal rights in the thirteenth century, compensating the monks of
Fecamp with manors in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire.
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